The Voyage of the Beagle

Content Warning: The source material uses outdated and offensive terms to describe Indigenous peoples, and references enslavement, ethnic cleansing, imperialism, and suicide.

“These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like power of changing their colour. They appear to vary their tints according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish purple, but when placed on the land, or in shallow water, this dark tint changed into one of a yellowish green.”

This description of cuttlefish represents the text’s earliest hint as to the Adaptation of Species to Their Environment. Darwin’s description of the evasive methods of the cuttlefish leads him to speculate about the adaptation of aquatic species across South America. The fact that Darwin can record how cuttlefish respond on land indicates his willingness to remove species from their environment to support his scientific research—an attitude that foreshadows the kidnapping of the Fuegians.

“At length [the enslaved people] were discovered, and a party of soldiers being sent, the whole were seized with the exception of one old woman, who, sooner than again be led into slavery, dashed herself to pieces from the summit of the mountain. In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom: in a poor negress it is mere brutal obstinacy.”

This passage highlights the prevailing racial attitudes of Darwin’s time, in which white colonizers considered themselves “superior” to the people they enslaved, who were seen as “irrational” and “savage” even in death. The dismissal of the enslaved woman’s actions as “mere brutal obstinacy” shows how the dominant culture viewed resistance to slavery as a negative and irrational trait. Darwin challenges this view with his comparison to the “Roman matron,” revealing how race and ethnicity shape the way in which people are perceived and developing the theme of Human Diversity and the Challenges of Cultural Exchange.

“It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit.”

Darwin is critical of the slave trade and the actions of enslavers throughout the text; he is particularly disturbed by the separation of families at auction houses, such as this instance in Brazil.