Mastery (The Modern Machiavellian Robert Greene Book 1)

by Robert Greene

In September 1835, the Beagle left the Pacific Coast of South America and headed west for the journey home. Their first stop along the way was a series of virtually unoccupied islands known as the Galápagos. The islands were famous for their wildlife, but nothing could prepare Darwin for what he would find there. Captain FitzRoy gave him one week to explore one of the islands, and then they would be on their way. From the moment he stepped on the island, Darwin realized something was different: this small speck of land was crammed with life that was not like anywhere else—thousands of black marine iguanas swarming around him, on the beach and in the shallow water; 500-pound tortoises lumbering about the shore; seals, penguins, and flightless cormorants, all cold-water creatures, inhabiting a tropical island. By the end of the week, he had counted twenty-six unique species of land birds on this one island alone. His jars began to fill up with the most bizarre plants, snakes, lizards, fish, and insects. Back on board the Beagle, he began to catalog and categorize the remarkable number of specimens he had collected. He was struck by the fact that almost all of them represented completely new species. He then made an even more remarkable discovery: the species differed from island to island, even though they were only some fifty miles apart. The tortoise shells had different markings, and the finches had developed different types of beaks, each designed for a specific kind of ...