Huxley was not so well situated as either Darwin, the well-to-do
amateur who was naturalist to the expedition, or Hooker, the son of
a distinguished botanist, receiving many privileges from his father's
friend, Captain Ross, while officially he was but an assistant-surgeon
and second naturalist. Huxley had neither friends nor influence beyond
the simple recommendation of "old John" Richardson. Macgillivray, the
naturalist, and the Captain himself had scientific interests, but not
so the other officers, who disliked seeing the decks messed by the
contents of the tow-net. Yet they were "as good fellows as sailors
ought to be, and generally are," though they did not understand why he
should be so zealous in pursuit of the objects which his friends
the middies christened "Buffons," after his volume of the _Suites à
Buffon_. As assistant-surgeon he messed with the middies, but his good
spirits and fun and freedom from any assumption of superiority made
the boys his good comrades.

From the first he was very busy, glorying in the prospect of being
able to give himself up to his favourite pursuits, without thereby
neglecting the proper duties of life. A twenty-eight gun frigate was
anything but a floating palace. The _Rattlesnake_ was badly fitted
out, and always leaky; the lower deck gave a head-space of four feet
ten, which was cramping to a man of five feet eleven; but he had the
run of the commodious chart-room, as arranged for a surveying ship,
and would have had the run of the library if Captain Stanley's
requisition for books had not been "overlooked" by a parsimonious
Admiralty. His tiny cabin was light enough to work in on a dull day;
but as for the possibility of making a scientific collection, it was
but seven feet by six, by five feet six inches high, and infested with
cockroaches to boot.