rgetic, and an ardent friend to all under his sway. He
would undertake any sort of trouble to assist those whom he thought
deserved assistance. He was a handsome man, strikingly like a gentleman,
with highly courteous manners, which resembled those of his maternal
uncle, the famous Lord Castlereagh, as I was told by the Minister at
Rio. Nevertheless he must have inherited much in his appearance from
Charles II., for Dr. Wallich gave me a collection of photographs which
he had made, and I was struck with the resemblance of one to Fitz-Roy;
and on looking at the name, I found it Ch. E. Sobieski Stuart, Count
d'Albanie, a descendant of the same monarch.

Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. It was usually worst in
the early morning, and with his eagle eye he could generally detect
something amiss about the ship, and was then unsparing in his blame. He
was very kind to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the
intimate terms which necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves
in the same cabin. We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the
voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended and praised slavery, which I
abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner,
who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were
happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered "No." I then
asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answer of
slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything? This made him
excessively angry, and he said that as I doubted his word we could not
live any longer together. I thought that I should have been compelled to
leave the ship; but as soon as the news spread, which it did quickly,
as the captain sent for the first lieutenant to assuage his anger by
abusing me, I was deeply gratified by receiving an invitation from all
the gun-room officers to mess with them. But after a few hours Fitz-Roy
showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me with an apology
and a request that I would continue to live with him.

His character was in several respects one of the most noble which I have
ever known.

The voyage of the "Beagle" has been by far the most important event in
my life, and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so
small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me thirty miles to
Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as
the shape of my nose. I have alway