Book One: The Thing Was, Chapter 4 Summary

Darwin is a hero in Guayaquil because he made the Galapagos Islands famous and created a booming tourist trade. This shows how someone's opinion, like Darwin's opinion of the Galapagos Islands, changes human behavior. A million years later, people don't have big brains, so they don't worry about opinions.

A Spanish ship carrying the Bishop of Panama to Peru discovered the Galapagos Islands in 1535 after being blown off course. They found the Galapagos Islands a horror and towed their ship away as quickly as possible. No one wanted the islands until Ecuador claimed them in 1832. Only after Darwin persuaded people that the islands were important did they become valued, so that Guayaquil contained three cruise ships dedicated to Galapagos Islands cruises.

However, in 1986, a new opinion is ruining the tourist trade: the opinion...