This very light-damaged drawing - originally largely blue, as shown by the edges where a mount protected this from fading - is the only one in the NMM collection by Augustus Earle from the first part of the Fitzroy and Darwin voyage of the 'Beagle', 1831-36. It records the approach to the Canary islands on the outward passage to South America. A local fishing boat is shown offshore, with the conical (white) Peak of Tenerife rising in the background. Bad weather had prevented Fitzroy calling at Madeira and he was refused Spanish permission to land at Tenerife owing to reports of a cholera outbreak in England, so had to make his first watering stop at St Jago in the Cape Verde Islands. Earle, his first draughtsman, was forced to leave the ship in 1833 at Montevideo, for health reasons, and was replaced there by Conrad Martens. The drawing was one of a gift of 15 in 1973 by Miss Hilda Smyth, a Fitzroy relative. The others are by Martens from later in the voyage (PAF6228-38 and PAF6240-42). See notes on PAF6227, another Martens drawing which begins the numerical sequence, though separately acquired in 1967.