Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle:

Well may we affirm that every part of the world is habitable! Whether lakes of brine, or those subterranean ones hidden beneath volcanic mountains#151;warm mineral springs#151;the wide expanse and depths of the ocean#151;the upper regions of the atmosphere, and even the surface of perpetual snow#151;all support organic beings."br#151;Charles DarwinbrbrHMS IBeagle/I put out of Devonport dockyard, England, on December 27, 1831, and one of the most extraordinary voyages in history was under way. Aboard was a highly skilled crew of surveyors, set to chart key coastlines for the British Admiralty#151;and a raw and inexperienced naturalist named Charles Darwin. This fairly obscure twenty-two year old had not been the first choice to accompany the IBeagle/I expedition. Yet his experiences and insights reverberate to this day.brbrFor a mind like Darwin's, open to fresh impressions, alert to their every implication, it was an exhilarating journey. Here is his detailed account of a five-year expedition that was as powerful emotionally and spiritually as it was scientifically; the formative moment of one of modernity's greatest minds.brbrThese journals capture the "first sensations" of standing on a sun-seared volcanic island in mid-Atlantic; or plunging through a Brazilian rain forest "undefaced by the hand of man." Here are his awestruck reactions to the plains of Patagonia, the heights and abysses of the Andes and the extraordinary world-within-a-world he found in the Gal