Darwin's Diary 1834May12_June10

ダーウィンの日記1834年5月12日から6月10日までの原文

[注釈] 南米大陸大西洋岸、パタゴニア南部のサンタ・クルス河口を出発して、ビーグル号が太平洋側に移動するまでの間の日付のダーウィンの日記です。

[日記原典] Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary ed. by R.D.Keynes, Cambridge U.P., 1988.

[1834 May] 12th
We put to sea; & steered in search of an alleged rock (the L'aigle) between the Falklands & mouth of Straits of Magellan; after an unsuccessful hunt, we anchored on the 16th off C. Virgins. —

16th
The weather has been bad, cold, & boisterous (& I proportionally sick & miserable). — It never ceases to be in my eyes most marvellous that on the coast of Patagonia there is constant dry weather & a clear sky, & at 120 miles to the South, there should be as constant clouds rain, hail, snow & wind. —

21st
During these days we have been beating about the entrance of the Straits, obtaining soundings & searching for some banks (a dangerous one was found); at night we came to an anchor;

22nd
& before daylight the Adventure was seen on her passage from the Falklands. Shortly after we left Berkeley Sound, a man of war came in; she has taken away all the prisoners, & now the island is quite quiet. — We received our letters; mine were dated October & November. —1 We shall now in a few days make the best of our way to Port Famine; the days are of course very short for surveying; the weather however, gracias a dios, is pretty fine for these Southern latitudes. — It is a very curious fact; that it now being only one month from the shortest day & in such a latitude, that the temperature is scarcely perceptibly colder, than during the summer; we all wear the same clothes as during last years visit. —

These were from his sisters and several friends (see Correspondence 1: 336–42, 345–8, 350–1 and 353–8).

29th
We anchored in Gregory Bay & took in six days water; our old friends the Indians were not there. — The weather has lately been very bad, & is now very cold. — The Thermometer has been all day below the freezing point & much snow has fallen: This is rather miserable work in a ship, where you have no roaring fire; & where the upper deck, covered with thawing snow is as it were, the hall in your house. —

June 1st
Arrived at Port Famine. I never saw a more cheer-less prospect; the dusky woods, pie-bald with snow, were only indistinctly to be seen through an atmosphere composed of two thirds rain & one of fog; the rest, as an Irishman would say, was very cold unpleasant air. —

Yesterday, when passing to the S. of C. Negro, two men hailed us & ran after the ship; a boat was lowered & picked them up. — They turned out to be two seamen who had run away from a Sealer & had joined the Patagonians. They had been treated by these Indians with their usual disinterested noble hospitality. — They parted company from them by accident & were walking down the coast to this place to look out for some vessel. I dare say they were worthless vagabonds, but I never saw more miserable ones; they had for some days been living on Muscles &c & berrys & had been exposed night & day to all the late constant rain & snow. — What will not man endure! —

2nd–8th
The Adventure rejoined us, after having examined the East side of this part of the Straits. —
The weather has during the greater part of the time been very foggy & cold; but we were in high luck in having two clear days for observations. On one of these the view of Sarmiento was most imposing: I have not ceased to wonder, in the scenery of Tierra del Fuego, at the apparent little elevation of mountains really very high. — I believe it is owing to a cause which one would be last to suspect, it is the sea washing their base & the whole mountain being in view. I recollect in Ponsonby Sound, after having seen a mountain down the Beagle Channel, I had another view of it across many ridges, one behind the other. — This immediately made one aware of its distance, & with its distance it was curious how its apparent height rose.

The Fuegians twice came & plagued us. — As there were many instruments, clothese &c & men on shore, the Captain thought it necessary to frighten them away. — The one time, we fired a great gun, when they were a long way off; it was very amusing to see through a glass their bold defiance, for as the shot splashed up the water, they picked up stones in return & threw them towards the ship which was then about a mile & a half off. — This not being sufficient, a boat was sent with orders to fire musket balls wide of them. — The Fuegians hid themselves behind the trees, but for every discharge of a musket they fired an arrow. These fell short of the boat; & the officer pointing to them & laughing made the Fuegians frantic with rage (as they well might be at so unprovoked an attack); they shook their very mantles with passion. — At last seeing the balls strike & cut the trees, they ran away; their final decampement was effected by the boat pretending to go in chase of their canoes & women. Another party having entered the bay was easily driven to a little creek to the north of it: the next day two boats were sent to drive them still further;1 it was admirable to see the determination with which four or five men came forward to defend themselves against three times that number. — As soon as they saw the boats they advanced a 100 yards towards us, prepared a barricade of rotten trees & busily picked up piles of stones for their slings. — Every time a musket was pointed towards them, they in return pointed an arrow. — I feel sure they would not have moved till more than one had been wounded. This being the case we retreated.
We filled up our wood & water; the latter is here excellent. The water we have lately been drinking contained so much salt that brackish is almost too mild a term to call it. — Amongst trifling discomforts there is none so bad as water with salts in it: when you drink a glass of water, like Physic, & then it does not satisfy the thirst. Mere impure, stinking water is of little consequence: especially as boiling it & making tea generally renders it scarcely perceptible. —

1 Note in margin: 'Rockets, noise, dead silence'.

8th
We weighed very early in the morning: The Captain intended to leave the St.s of Magellan by the Magdalen channel, which has only lately been discovered & very seldom travelled by Ships. The wind was fair, but the atmosphere very thick, so that we missed much very curious scenery. The dark ragged clouds were rapidly driven over the mountains, nearly to their base; the glimpses which we had caught through the dusky mass were highly interesting; jagged points, cones of snow, blue glaciers, strong outlines marked on a lurid sky, were seen at different distances & heights. — In the midst of such scenery, we anchored at C. Turn, close to Mount Saimiento, which was then hidden in the clouds. At the base of the lofty & almost perpendicular sides of our little cove there was one deserted wigwam, and it alone reminded us that man sometimes wandered amongst these desolate regions; imagination could scarcely paint a scene where he seemed to have less claims or less authority; the inanimate works of nature here alone reign with overpowering force. —

9th
We were delighted in the morning by seeing the veil of mist gradually rise from & display Sarmiento. — I cannot describe the pleasure of viewing these enormous, still, & hence sublime masses of snow which never melt & seem doomed to last as long as this world holds together.1 —

The field of snow extended from the very summit to within 1/8th of the total height, to the base, this part was dusky wood. — Every outline of snow was most admirably clear & defined; or rather I suppose the truth is, that from the absence of shadow, no outlines, but those against the sky, are perceptible & hence such stand out so strongly marked. — Several glaciers descended in a winding course from the pile of snow to the sea, they may be likened to great frozen Niagaras, & perhaps these cataracts of ice are as fully beautiful as the moving ones of water. — By night we reached the Western parts of the Channel; in vain we tried to find anchoring ground, these islands are so truly only the summits of steep submarine mountains.— We had in consequence to stand off & on during a long, pitch-dark night of 14 hours, & this in a narrow channel. — Once we got very near the rocks; The night was sufficiently anxious to the Captain & officers. —

1 See watercolour by Conrad Martens (CM No. 208, Beagle Record p. 113) based on a drawing (CM No. 209) initialled RF and labelled as follows: The grand glacier, Mount Sarmiento. The mountain rises to about 3 times the height here seen, but all is here hidden by dark misty clouds — a faint sunny gleam lights the upper part of the glacier, giving its snowy surface a tinge which appears almost of a rose colour by being contrasted with the blue of its icy crags — a faint rainbow was likewise visible to the right of the glacier, but the whole was otherwise very grey & gloomy. June 9 1834'. See Beagle Record p. 398, and also CM Nos. 210 and 213, Beagle Record pp. 220–1.

10th
In the morning, in company with the Adventure, we made the best of our way into the open ocean. —1 The Western coast generally consists of low, rounded, quite barren hills of Granite. Sir J. Narborough called one part of it South Desolation. — "because it is so desolate a land to behold", well indeed might he say so, — Outside the main islands, there are numberless rocks & breakers on which the long swell of the open Pacific incessantly rages. — We passed out between the "East & West Furies"; a little further to the North, the Captain from the number of breakers called the sea the "Milky way". — The sight of such a coast is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril, & shipwreck.

1 See watercolour by Conrad Martens based on drawing labelled 'Lowe Cockburn Channel — Still morning — the vessel working out of Warp Cove from whence the sketch was taken. The ship's track was from behind this neatest point, which is the termination of Magdalen Channel. June 10 1834' (CM No. 210, Beagle Record p. 221).

[地図] 1834年6月11日日没時のビーグル号の概略位置(タワー・ロックス付近)..

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