Charles Darwin at the Cape: notes on his sociological observations

Wilmot James

doi:10.4102/sajs.v105i11/12.148

Abstract

Charles Darwin spent most of his time geologising at the Cape - as he did everywhere else on the voyage of the Beagle. Andrew Smith, the Scottish surgeon, naturalist and zoologist and the first Superintendent of the South African Museum in Cape Town, accompanied him to the important Cape Peninsula sites, and he collected a variety of rock specimens. He kept a special geological notebook in which he described in considerable detail his geological and geographical observations of the road from Simonstown to Cape Town, Table Mountain, Lion's Head and Rump, the Sea Point Contact, the road to Paarl, Paarl Rock, the Drakenstein Mountains, Franschoek and the pass to Houw Hoek, Sir Lowry's Pass and the Cape Flats.

Highlights

Charles Darwin spent most of his time geologising at the Cape—as he did everywhere else on the voyage of the Beagle
Darwin described the population living at the Cape in 1836 as follows: ‘In Cape Town it is said the present number of inhabitants is about 15 000 and in the whole colony, including coloured people, 200 000
The settlers’ attitudes to the emancipation of the slaves bothered Darwin so much that he was persuaded—by John Herschel’s wife Catherine we think—to co-publish with Captain FitzRoy a set of reflections on the good work of missionaries in the emancipation of slaves. Their 23-page Letter, Containing Remarks on the Moral State of Tahiti, New Zealand, &c., was one of Darwin’s first publications and appeared in the South African Christian Recorder of September 1836.2 It revealed some of their thinking on the major questions of human variation and cultural development at the time

Summary

Introduction

Darwin described the population living at the Cape in 1836 as follows: ‘In Cape Town it is said the present number of inhabitants is about 15 000 and in the whole colony, including coloured people, 200 000. ‘A very short stay at the Cape of Good Hope is sufficient’, he wrote, ‘to convince even a passing stranger, that a strong feeling against the Missionaries in South Africa is there very prevalent.

Results

Conclusion