Captain Fitz-Roy, on a previous voyage, had carried several natives to England, and now brought them again to their own land. "They had become," says Darwin, "entirely European in their habits and wishes, so much so that the younger one had forgotten his own language, and their countrymen paid but very little attention to them. We built houses for them, and planted gardens, but by the time we return again on our passage round the Horn, I think it will be very doubtful how much of their property will be left unstolen." At the Cape of Good Hope, Darwin met and dined with Sir John Herschel. For some time he lived at St. Helena, "within a stone's throw of Napoleon's tomb." He became so deeply interested in his geological investigations in South America, that he wrote his sister Susan: "I literally could hardly sleep at nights for thinking over my day's work. The scenery was so new, and so majestic; everything at an elevation of twelve thousand feet bears so different an aspect from that in a lower country." To another sister he wrote: "I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage, if thrown away for all other respects, will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing what _little_ we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life as one can in any likelihood pursue.... What fine opportunities for geology and for studying the infinite host of living beings! Is not this a prospect to keep up the most flagging spirit? If I was to throw it away, I don't think I should ever rest quiet in my grave." Darwin says: "As far as I can judge of myself, I worked to the utmost during the voyage, from the mere pleasure of investigation, and from my strong desire to add a few facts to the great mass of facts in natural science. But I was also ambitious to take a fair place among scientific men." In studying the geology of St. Jago, "It then first dawned on me that I might perhaps write a book on the geology of the various countries visited, and this made me thrill with delight. That was a memorable hour to me, and how distinctly I can call to mind the low cliff of lava beneath which I rested, with the sun glaring hot, a few strange desert plants growing near, and with living corals in the tidal pools at my feet. Later in the voyage, Fitz-Roy asked me to read some of my journal, and declared it would be worth publishing, so here was a second book in prospect!" Darwin, stirred by the right kind of ambition, had found his life-work. It would not be in the church, as his father had fondly hoped, but the world would be his audience.