Page 18 - RD (English) - Sample

10 chapter 1

Darwin is supposed to have changed his outlook, however, while
undertaking a five-year voyage (1831–1836) to some of the remotest cor-
ners of earth as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle. His travels took
him to the bottom of South America and to the windswept shores of
the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean, 970 kilometers off the coast
of Ecuador. There he encountered much that didn’t fit his understand-
ing of Biblical creation. He saw geological wonders – volcanoes and
rock strata – that pointed to an earth much older than the six thousand
years the Bible allowed. Of course, he had already encountered the
idea that the earth was more ancient than he had previously supposed
when he read British geologist Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, the
first volume of which was published just a year before Darwin set out.
In Principles Lyell proposed that the earth’s geological structure was
a result not of a recent creation but of slow natural forces operating
almost invisibly over millions and millions of years. Darwin felt what
he saw on his voyage confirmed Lyell’s hypothesis.
Aside from geological questions, Darwin also found himself

From 1831–36, Charles
Darwin sailed around the
world on the ship Beagle.