The Red Notebook

February 20th. – This day has been memorable in the annals of Valdivia, for the most severe earthquake experienced by the oldest inhabitant. I happened to be on shore, and was lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on suddenly, and lasted two minutes, but the time appeared much longer. The rocking of the ground was very sensible. The undulations appeared to my companion and myself to come from due east, whilst others thought they proceeded from south-west: this shows how difficult it sometimes is to perceive the directions of the vibrations. There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy: it was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross-ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of his body. A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid; – one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced. In the forest, as a breeze moved the trees, I felt only the earth tremble, but saw no other effect. Captain Fitz Roy and some officers were at the town during the shock, and there the scene was more striking; for although the houses, from being built of wood, did not fall, they were violently shaken, and the boards creaked and rattled together. The people rushed out of doors in the greatest alarm. It is these accompaniments that create that perfect horror of earthquakes, experienced by all who have thus seen, as well as felt, their effects. Within the forest it was a deeply interesting, but by no means an awe- exciting phenomenon. The tides were very curiously affected. The great shock took place at the time of low water; and an old woman who was on the beach told me that the water flowed very quickly, but not in great waves, to high- water mark, and then as quickly returned to its proper level; this was also evident by the line of wet sand. The same kind of quick but quiet movement in the tide happened a few years since at Chiloe, during a slight earthquake, and created much causeless alarm. In the course of the evening there were many weaker shocks, which seemed to produce in the harbour the most complicated currents, and some of great strength.

—Charles Darwin
The Voyage of the Beagle, Ch. 14

The earthquake that Darwin witnessed first-hand in 1835 destroyed the town of Concepcíon. Here’s hoping today’s massive Concepción earthquake is less severe.

I’m currently reading a pre-publication copy of Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (review to follow shortly). The book describes Charles Darwin’s abhorrence of slavery, and how it might have influenced his evolutionary thinking.

In the final chapter of The Voyage of the Beagle, in one of his most outspoken pieces of published writing, the young Darwin wrote:

On the 19th of August [1836] we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate […]

[W]hat a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.

From the comfort of the complaisant Twenty-First Century, it is easy for us to shake our heads in astonishment that slavery continued for as long as it did, not being officially abolished in Brazil until 1888:

And then, we turn to today’s Guardian and read:

Brazilian taskforce frees more than 4,500 slaves after record number of raids on remote farms

Brazilian authorities rescued more than 4,500 slaves from captivity last year, carrying out a record number of raids on remote ranches and plantations, according to figures released this week by the country’s work ministry.

The government said its anti-slavery taskforce, a roaming unit designed to crack down on modern-day slavery, had freed 4,634 workers from slave-like conditions in 2008. The taskforce, which often works with armed members of the federal police, said it had undertaken 133 missions and visited 255 different farms in 2008. The ministry said former slaves had been paid £2.4m in compensation.

One-hundred and seventy-three years after Charles Darwin gratefully left his final slave-country, we’ve still got an awfully long way to go.

My partner Jen’s oldest nephew, Liam, has just returned to Blighty after a two-year trip working his way around the world. His final postcard to us came from a place which markets itself as the southernmost city in the world: Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina:

Postcard from Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego

Jen’s family celebrated Liam’s return the other week by drinking lots of beer down the pub. Liam had no idea how pleased I had been to receive a postcard from the region where Darwin spent so much time during his Beagle voyage. In fact, until I told him about it, he seemed blissfully unaware that my hero had ever been to Tierra del Fuego.

Fortunately for Liam, he was sitting at the far end of the table from me, so I was unable to take the opportunity to bore him senseless on the subject.

See previously: Three encounters with orang-utans