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To W. P. Snow   22 November 1881

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)

Nov. 22d 1881

Dear Sir

I hope that you may succeed in publishing a new edition of your Cruise to T. del Fuego.— You saw so much more of the natives than I did, that whenever we differ you probably are in the right. Indeed the success of the Missionary establishment there proves that I took a very erroneous view of the nature & capabilities of the Fuegians..—1

I have read with interest the striking account of the storm in Chambers Journal.—2

I have attended for so many years exclusively to Botany that I have forgotten what little I knew about animals, & I shd. not profit by inspecting your specimens of Holothuriæ.3

I am so old and my health is so indifferent that conversing with anyone fatigues me much: I will not, therefore ask you to take so long a walk for the mere chance of my being able to see you for five or ten minutes.—

With my sympathy for your distresses & troubles, I remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

1
Snow had given a generally favourable account of the natives of Tierra del Fuego in his published narrative (Snow 1857; see letter from W. P. Snow, 21 November 1881 and n. 1). CD was regularly informed of the missionary activity in Patagonia by Bartholomew James Sulivan (see, for example, letter from B. J. Sulivan, 18 March 1881).
2
Snow’s description of the storm was published in Chambers’s Journal, 12 February 1881, pp. 102–4.
3
Snow had offered to show CD specimens that he had collected of Holothuria, a genus of sea cucumbers, from the Beagle Channel in 1855.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.4 the nature] ‘e’ of ‘the’ over ‘eir’
1.5 of the Fuegians.] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13505,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13505