Galapagos: World's End by William Beebe

I have been reading books about the Galapagos in preparation for an upcoming trip there. Since this will be a one and done trip, I want to immerse myself in all things Galapagos, and this book, which is available on Google books as well as through my library's subscription to Hoopla, is one of the first hand accounts of a Galapagos expedition, as opposed to an author writing about somebody else's trip. As is widely known, in the 1830's Charles Darwin circumnavigated the globe and enroute he observed variations among the Galapagos Islands' species that inspired him to formulate the theory of natural selection. Eighty-eight years later, in 1923, a scientific expedition sponsored by the New York Zoological Society followed in Darwin's footsteps, led by William Beebe and while he is the author of this book, several of the expedition members author chapters or sections of chapters. The prose is about what you would expect from people who are primarily naturalists, meaning overly descriptive and at times quite tedious to read. That said, at the time of it's release it was wildly popular (which gives you an idea of what one had to settle for a century ago in terms of entertainment) and therefore worth giving a read if only for the immersion experience.