MEMOIR. XX1 
This, from another letter, is interesting as an early estimate of 
Darwin: “I first read Darwin’s /ournal three or four years back, 
and have lately re-read it. As the journal of a scientific traveller, 
it is second only to Humboldt’s Personal Narrative ; as a work of 
general interest, perhaps superior to it. He is an ardent admirer 
and most able supporter of Mr. Lyell’s views. His style of writing 
I very much admire, so free from all labour,* affectation, or egotism, 
yet so full of interest and original thought.” 
Here, also, as showing towards what goal Wallace’s mind was 
travelling : “I begin to feel dissatisfied with a mere local collection. 
I should like to take some one family to study thoroughly, prin- 
cipally with a view to the theory of the origin of species.” 
The two friends had often discussed schemes for going abroad 
to explore some unharvested region, and at last these took definite 
shape, mainly through the interest excited by a little book, pub- 
lished by John Murray in 1847, entitled A Voyage up the River 
Amazons, including a Residence at Para, by Mr. W. H. Edwards, 
an American tourist. It led to Wallace proposing to Bates a joint 
expedition to the river Amazons for the purpose of exploring the 
Natural History of its banks ; the plan being to make a collection 
of objects, dispose of the duplicates in London to pay expenses, 
and gather facts, as Mr. Wallace expressed it in one of his letters, 
“towards solving the problem of the origin of species.” T 
The choice was a happy one, for, except by the German 
zoologist Von Spix, and the botanist Von Martius, in 1817-20,f and 
subsequently by Count de Castelnau, no exploration of a region so 
rich and interesting to the biologist had been attempted. Early in 
1848 Bates and Wallace met in London to study South American 
animals and plants in the principal collections, and afterwards 
went to Chatsworth to gain information about orchids, which 
they proposed to collect in the moist tropical forests and send 
home. 
On April 26th, 1848, they embarked at Liverpool in a barque of 
only 192 tons burthen, one of the few traders to Para, to which 
seaport of the Amazons region a swift passage, “straight as an 
arrow,” brought them on May 28th. In some unpublished notes, 
* “ Ars est celare artem.” What labour writing was to Darwin is told in the Zi 
and Letters, vol. i., pp. 99, 152-4. 
} Vide Preface, p. vii. 
t Zravels in Brazil, 2 vols. (Longmans), 1824. 
