Alfred Russel Wallace

by Peter Raby

  The sea was calm as a lake, and the glorious sun of the tropics threw a flood of golden light over all. The scene was to me inexpressibly delightful. I was in a new world, and could dream of the wonderful productions hid in those rocky forests, and in those azure abysses. But few European feet had ever trodden the shores I gazed upon; its plants, and animals, and men were alike almost unknown, and I could not help speculating on what my wanderings there for a few days might bring to light.2

  It was the men who first struck Wallace. He had an immediate opportunity of comparing ‘two of the most distinct and strongly marked races that the earth contains’, as he stood among the quiet, unimpulsive Malay crew and watched the Ke men singing and shouting as they paddled up in long canoes decorated with shells and waving plumes of cassowaries’ hair, and scrambled aboard, swarming all over the vessel with exuberant enjoyment; and the physical contrast was as remarkable as their ‘moral features’, equally pointing to ‘absolute diversity’. It was a busy few days, as the captain supervised the building of two small praus – the Ke Islanders were superb boat-builders – while the crew traded and bartered; and Wallace, naturally, did a little business of his own, once he had convinced everyone that he was willing to exchange fragrant tobacco for black and green beetles. Offerings were brought to him contained in lengths of bamboo, and frequently the inhabitants had eaten each other-into fragments after a day’s confinement. But he was pleased with one particularly grand – and quite ‘new’ – beetle, glittering with ruby and emerald tints: a buprestid, Cyphogastra calepyga, first spotted decorating a tobacco pouch. There was a lack of convenient paths, and the terrain was rugged, but even so he captured 35 species of butterfly, many of them unknown in European collections, 13 species of birds, and 194 species of insects, in the four days. He also encountered an old man in the forest, who watched quietly and politely while Wallace caught an insect, pinned it and put it away in his collecting-box until he could contain himself no longer, ‘but bent almost double, and enjoyed a hearty roar of laughter’.3 Wallace, reflecting on the diversity of man, and now even more conscious of the European constructions of the civilised, and of the savage or barbarous, made the thirty-hour passage to Dobbo, and the flat, forest-covered Aru Islands.

  Dobbo was the trading settlement for the Bugis and Chinese, three rows of houses – large thatched sheds really – stretched out on a sand spit, with good anchorage on either side. As it was the very beginning of the trading season, the place was almost deserted, so Wallace took possession of a house near Warzbergen’s, installed a cane chair and a bamboo bench for bed and sofa, rigged up boards for a table and shelves, had a window cut in the palm-leaf wall, and pronounced himself quite content. After an early breakfast, and with Baderoon to cut a path with his chopper if necessary, he set off with a guide to investigate the virgin forests. They did not manage more than a mile before the path disappeared altogether, forcing them to turn back. But the expedition lasted long enough for Wallace to take thirty species of butterfly – more than he had captured in one day since the riches of the Amazon; and three days later he had the good fortune to sight ‘one of the most magnificent insects the world contains’, the great bird-winged butterfly Ornithoptera poseidon:

  I trembled with excitement as I saw it coming majestically toward me, and could hardly believe I had really succeeded in my stroke till I had taken it out of the net and was gazing, lost in admiration, at the velvet black and brilliant green of its wings, seven inches across, its golden body, and crimson breast. It is true I had seen similar insects in cabinets, at home, but it is quite another thing to capture such one’s self – to feel it struggling between one’s fingers, and to gaze upon its fresh and living beauty, a bright gem shining out amid the silent gloom of a dark and tangled forest.4

  The village of Dobbo held that evening at least one contented man.

  In spite of such excitements, his collections came on slowly. The weather was poor – only four good collecting days out of the first sixteen – but the quality was excellent, most of the birds being either known but rare New Guinea species, or completely new. There were spiders, lizards and crabs in abundance, and after a windy night the beach was strewn with wonderful shells, fragments of coral, and strange sponges. He paid one brief visit to the larger island of Wokan, where he delighted in the palms and tree ferns, but could not move his base for a while because of the very real threat of pirates. Finally, his boat was ready, and he and his men sailed across and trekked inland for two hours, till they reached a house – ‘or rather a small shed, of the most miserable description’ – where, the steersman assured him, he could get every kind of bird and beast to be found in Aru.5 Wallace negotiated a week’s rent – the price was one sheath knife, or parang – for a five-foot section of the hut, and got ready for work with keen expectation.

  After two or three wet days he was beginning to despair when Baderoon returned with a small bird, slightly smaller than a thrush:

  The greater part of its plumage was of an intense cinnabar red, with a gloss as of spun glass. On the head the feathers became short and velvety, and shaded into rich orange. Beneath, from the breast downward, was pure white, with the softness and gloss of silk, and across the breast a band of deep metallic green separated this colour from the red of the throat. Above each eye was a round spot of the same metallic green; the bill was yellow, and the feet and legs were of a fine cobalt blue, strikingly contrasting with all the other parts of the body. Merely in arrangement of colours and texture of plumage this little bird was a gem of the first water, yet these comprised only half its strange beauty. Springing from each side of the breast, and ordinarily lying concealed under the wings, were little tufts of greyish feathers about two inches long, and each terminated by a broad band of intense emerald green. These plumes can be raised at the will of the bird, and spread out into a pair of elegant fans when the wings are elevated. But this is not the only ornament. The two middle feathers of the tail are in the form of slender wires about five inches long, and which diverge in a beautiful double curve. About half an inch of the end of this wire is webbed on the outer side only, and coloured of a fine metallic green, and being curled spirally inward, form a pair of elegant glittering buttons, hanging five inches below the body, and the same distance apart. These two ornaments, the breast-fans and the spiral-tipped tail-wires, are altogether unique, not occurring on any other species of the eight thousand different birds that are known to exist upon the earth; and, combined with the most exquisite beauty of plumage, render this one of the most perfectly lovely of the many lovely productions of nature.6

  The village of Dobbo

  Wallace had obtained a specimen of the King Bird of Paradise.

  I knew how few Europeans had ever beheld the perfect little organism I now gazed upon, and how very imperfectly it was still known in Europe … I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course – year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness – to all appearances such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilised man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man.7

  The bird aroused such complex, contradictory and prescient thoughts in Wallace’s mind that for a moment, especially in his appreciation of the fragility of organic and inorganic nature
, he sounds like a twenty-first-century ecologist. The Victorian naturalist soon asserted himself, and he acquired another, equally perfect, and a young specimen of the Great Paradise bird. Lying in his hut before dawn, he awoke to their cries as they went to seek their breakfast. These birds were not yet in full plumage, but he was able to stay in Aru until they were, shifting his base yet once more, further away from Dobbo. He remained long enough to acquire knowledge of their habits, partly from his own observation, but mostly from his hunters, and from talking to the Aru people. For Wallace was largely hut-bound for much of the time. The mosquitoes and sandflies had attacked his feet, and after a month’s punishment they broke out in ulcers which were so painful that he could not walk. He would crawl down to the river to bathe, only to be taunted by the sight of the blue-winged Papilio ulysses, and then have to drag himself reluctantly back to the bird-skinning table. Baderoon and Ali kept him well supplied.

  As always, enforced leisure, personally frustrating from the naturalist’s point of view, was highly productive in terms of reflection. As he had done in the Amazon, Wallace observed the human inhabitants of the forest, noting and analysing the diet and the way of life of the Aru Islanders. The first group among whom he lived ate relatively little meat, and, growing no rice, depended on the sago palm: he thought this diet responsible for the high incidence of skin disease. But in his second location, there was much more hunting. The men and boys were expert archers and shot birds, pigs and kangaroos, so they had a tolerably good supply of meat to go with their vegetables. The result of this was superior health, well-made bodies, and generally clear skins. He spent long evenings in conversation with them, and carefully recorded the details of their ornaments and utensils – the pandanus sleeping mat, ‘clothing, house, bedding, and furniture, all in one’; palm-leaf boxes, lined with pandanus leaves or plaited grass, the joints and angles covered with strips of split rattan, the lid covered with the watertight spathe of the areca palm. As among the Dyaks of Borneo and the Indians of the Amazon, he was

  delighted with the beauty of the human form, a beauty of which stay-at-home civilised people can never have any conception. What are the finest Grecian statues to the living moving breathing forms which everywhere surround me. The unrestrained grace of the native savage as he moves about his daily occupations or lounges at his ease must be seen to be understood. A young savage handling his bow is the perfection of physical beauty. Few persons feel more acutely than myself any offence against modesty among civilised folk, but here no such ideas have a moment’s place; the free development of every limb seems wholly admirable, and made to be admired.8

  As with the Dyaks, Wallace commented, perhaps with an eye on his readership, the women were not so pleasant to look at, except in extreme youth: early marriages and hard work soon took their toll of their grace and beauty. But, all in all, here was a people superbly adapted to the particular environment. He gave them presents when he left, and believed that on the whole his stay ‘among these simple and good-natured people was productive of pleasure and profit to both parties’. Had he known that he was to be prevented from returning, he would have felt ‘some sorrow in leaving a place where I had first seen so many rare and beautiful living things’.9

  Back in Dobbo, he found the town so full that he had to move into the court-house. For six weeks he was confined indoors, but he had plenty of work, writing up his notes and arranging his collections. Ali was sent off solo to Wanumbai, to buy paradise birds and prepare the skins: he came back with sixteen glorious specimens, and would have done even better had he not been ill for some of the time. Baderoon, however, reprimanded for laziness (very high on Wallace’s list of faults), took his wages and resigned. He soon lost the lot, borrowed some more money, lost that, and ended up as a ‘slave’ to his creditor. Now, at the end of June, the monsoon was approaching, and the merchant praus were being loaded. Wallace stowed his treasures on board: nine thousand specimens, of about sixteen hundred distinct species.

  I had made the acquaintance of a strange and little-known race of men; I had become familiar with the traders of the far East; I had revelled in the delights of exploring a new flora and fauna, one of the most remarkable and most beautiful and least known in the world; and I had succeeded in the main object for which I had undertaken the journey – namely, to obtain fine specimens of the magnificent birds of paradise, and to be enabled to observe them in their native forests.10

  Flushed with this success, some travellers might have contemplated sailing home. But, as the prau surged back before a favourable wind to Macassar, covering the thousand miles in less than ten days, Wallace resolved to continue his travels. He felt full of confidence about the value of his collections, and his mind was richly stocked.

  In Macassar, he spent the rest of July preparing the Aru collection for shipment to London: if it left Singapore by the Mavor early in September, it ought to arrive during January 1858. ‘Should fetch near £500,’ he guessed. For once, he underestimated hugely: the collection was sold for a thousand pounds. His agent was finding a good market for Wallace’s treasures: between March 1855 and June 1863, the British Museum bought 20 per cent of his shipments, 2,707 specimens. There was a box waiting for him from Stevens: the double-barrelled shotgun he had ordered the year before, and a new stock of pins, arsenic and other collecting essentials. He kept in touch with the Geographical: ‘I went principally to shoot Birds of Paradise,’ he informed Shaw about the trip to Aru, and, he added nonchalantly as though he had been on a grouse moor, ‘had capital sport.’11 There were papers to send: ‘On the Great Bird of Paradise’ and ‘On the Natural History of the Aru Islands’, both for the Annals, and a great batch of letters to reply to: from his cousin Wilson in Australia, his brother John in California, from Spruce, from Bates, a lot of Stevensian dispatches, and one from Darwin. But he did not answer any of them for a while. He felt eager to get back to work. Leaving Ali in hospital, Wallace hired a boat and set off thirty miles or so to the north, where Jacob Mesman, the brother of his Dutch friend in Macassar, had offered to look after him. In a little valley surrounded by mountains, he found a delightfully tranquil spot. Mesman quickly had a bamboo house built for him, and he settled down for a relaxing stay, with constant supplies of pork, fowls and eggs, and a daily delivery of buffalo milk in a bamboo. There were enough birds and beetles to keep him occupied, but his chief excitements were the butterflies: so active and shy that they were difficult to capture, but always worth the effort – the blue-banded Papilios, miletus and telephus, the superb gold-green Papilio macedon, and the rare little swallow-tail Papilio rhesus. He also made a memorable trip to the falls of the Maros river, where he was lucky to obtain six specimens of the large swallow-tailed Papilio androcles. The geological structure of this part of Celebes intrigued him, limestone mountains apparently resting on a bed of basalt. He returned to his hut as the rains began, an encouragement for insect-collecting, but bringing with it other hazards: fever, dysentery, swollen feet. Snakes became more evident, sometimes turning up in his collecting-net when he dragged it through piles of leaves in search for insects. He went back to Macassar, to await the Dutch mail steamer.

  By this time, he had digested and had time to compose a reply to the letter that had arrived from Darwin. Wallace’s first letter from Celebes, to which this was a reply, has been lost, though some of its contents are clear enough from Darwin’s responses.

  I am much obliged for your letter of Oct. 10th, from Celebes, received a few days ago: in a laborious undertaking sympathy is a valuable & real encouragement. By your letter & even still more by your paper in Annals, a year or more ago, I can plainly see that we have thought (very) much alike & to a certain extent have come to similar conclusions. In regard to the Paper in Annals, I agree to the truth of almost every word of your paper; & I daresay that you will agree with me that it is very rare to find oneself agreeing pretty closely with any theoretical paper, for it is lamentable how each man draws his own different conclusions from t
he same fact.12

  Darwin, shaken by Lyell and Blyth, had by now reassessed the Sarawak paper on species. He proceeded, in the words of Adrian Desmond and James Moore, to give Wallace ‘the nicest kind of trespass notice’:13

  This summer will make the 20th year (!) since I opened my first notebook, on the question how & in what way do species & varieties differ from each other. – I am now preparing my work for publication, but I find the subject so very large, that though I have written many chapters, I do not suppose I shall go to press for two years. – I have never heard how long you intend staying in the Malay Archipelago; I wish I might profit by the publication of your Travels there before my work appears, for no doubt you will reap a large harvest of facts. –

  The collection of facts, he seems to imply, is to be Wallace’s province, rather than more theory:

  It is really impossible to explain my views in the compass of a letter on the causes & means of variation in a state of nature; but I have slowly adopted a distinct & tangible idea, – Whether true or false others must judge; for the firmest conviction of the truth of a doctrine by its author, seems, alas, not to be slightest guarantee of truth. –

  He also discussed domestic and wild varieties of duck – the specimen Wallace had dispatched to him via Stevens had arrived – and closed with another significant enquiry:

  One of the subjects on which I have been experimentising, & which cost me much trouble, is the means of distribution of all organic beings found on oceanic islands – & any facts on this subject would be received most gratefully: Land-Molluscs are a great perplexity to me.