Five anchorages from one five-year survey: a fossil beach on the pampas, an Andean base camp, a first island shore, a coral atoll, and the last long stop before home.
From September 1832 Darwin quarried nine species of extinct giant mammal out of the cliffs at nearby Punta Alta, among them the nearly complete skeleton on which Richard Owen founded the genus Scelidotherium. Owen began describing the haul in 1837, and it made Darwin's name among British scientists.
The Beagle made this its Pacific base from late July 1834. Riding inland in March 1835, Darwin crossed the Andes at 13,000 feet and found fossil seashells in the rock — evidence, to him, that the whole range had been lifted out of the sea.
The Beagle raised these islands on 15 September 1835, and Darwin's first landing was here on San Cristóbal, then called Chatham Island. The mockingbirds that differed from island to island — more than the famous finches — set off the questions that ended in On the Origin of Species.
The Beagle sounded this lagoon from 1 to 12 April 1836. What Darwin measured here completed his theory that atolls are coral rims left standing as volcanic islands slowly sink — confirmed only in 1952, when boreholes at Enewetak finally struck volcanic rock more than 1,200m down.
HMS Beagle anchored here on 31 May 1836 and stayed until 18 June — the last long call before home. Darwin rode over the mountain to meet the astronomer John Herschel, whose phrase for the origin of species, 'that mystery of mysteries', he borrowed for the opening page of his own book.
Think you'd have found them? Play today's expedition, or replay this one from the archive.