’But my emotions on the “Beagle” were as a flood.  Here I was sailing to a quarter of the world which the Creator, in His goodness, had provided for the support and happiness of men.  Yet they did not know actually what it was like; the inheritance was still unexplored.  And that land of North-West Australia was to be all my own, to designate as I wished.  My feeling might be compared to that of a child waiting for a new toy.  It gave rise to an ardent expectation.

’Behind was the despair of thousands, without the necessaries of life or the prospect of them; a nightmare of darkness that haunted me.  But in front, as I trusted, lay hands which should afford mankind another start.  Why, the busy brains of England were already unconsciously preparing every device and implement, that could be useful to the rise of the New World.  We make ready in the dark for the light.’

At Cape Town, the halfway house to Australia, Sir George chartered a schooner for detailed exploring work.  In it, a trifle on the water, he completed a voyage which never lost its charm to him, notwithstanding the rude hardships.  He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and shoot sea birds.  Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists.  To shoot, from a boat, needed practice.

‘You were,’ he laid down the conditions, ’at issue with a heavy roll of the sea, even in glorious weather.  Fortunately, I had always been an expert shot, and I quickly suited myself to the motion.  You found your chances when the skiff sank into the trough of the waves, and a bird flew screaming over their tops; or, again, when you rose on the surge and had a wider target.’  Thus at sea, and subsequently on land, he bagged many a fresh fact of natural history, and sent it home to enrich the British Museum.  His word on that point was crisp.  ’You had only to walk or row a little, and you secured a new living thing.  The cry of the outlook was something discovered.  The child waiting for the toy, of whom I spoke, was not half so happily situate as we.  It was all surprises.’

His heart fell somewhat when he espied the land at Hanover Bay—­the Promised Land, but naked and unkindly.  What a contrast to the bouquet of Brazil!  Still, why should there not be acres rich and worthy, behind those dull grey rocks?  The idea of an incorrigible country was not to be entertained, for overcrowded England stood, with her hand for ear-trumpet, and the question on her tongue, ‘What is the message?’ Adventure followed adventure in the effort to secure it.