Tonight, we’ll read from the ninth chapter of British naturalist Charles Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle” titled “Santa Cruz, Patagonia and the Falkland Islands”.

The five-year expedition laid the groundwork for Darwin’s later theory of evolution by natural selection.

In this chapter, Darwin recounts an overland expedition up the Santa Cruz River in southern Patagonia. The landscape is stark and repetitive, with shingle plains, thorny bushes, and a scarcity of birds or waterfowl. Darwin documents vast flows of basaltic lava and enormous erratic boulders, offering early insights into glacial and marine forces that shaped the land. His observations blend physical hardship with scientific wonder, as he marvels at condors circling above the cliffs and theorizes about the slow, ancient processes that carved the Patagonian terrain.

If you’d like to start from the beginning, the first episode of this series aired on June 10th, 2024, with subsequent monthly episodes exploring Darwin’s journey in detail.