Darwin Correspondence Project

Clapham

Tuesday.

My dear Charles

I hope by this time you have received your manuscript which we entrusted on Sunday to Erasmus to send to you It is difficult to discriminate how much of the interest we felt in it belongs to yourself, from what it would have possessed if it had been written by an indifferent person. I think however that it would have been a very interesting journal even in that case. I am not in general a good reader of travels, but I found no part of yours tedious. We read a great deal of it aloud too, which is a more severe test. I am afraid we have done but little towards the end for which you lent it us, having only marked a few of the passages that pleased us most, & that not throughout. I was especially interested with your account of Otaheite & New Zealand. I think that of New Holland to which you called my attention is well worth insertion. In short there is more variety and a greater number of interesting portions than in 99.100ths of the travels that are published I should not have the least doubt of it's success & I think the less it is mixed up with the Captains the better. If Dr Holland read your journey from the Rio Negro & thought it would not do for publication it only affects my opinion of his taste & not the least in the world the merits of the thing itself. I liked your account of Keeling island, but your theory of the lagoon islands seemed to us not quite clearly enough explained.

Will you remember me very kindly to Henslow. | Yours affecty| H Wedgwood.