168 The Malay Archipelago. [A-pril, 



But the path of tlie naturahst traveller is not always so smooth : 

 sometimes he is obliged to drag his weary body through marsh and 

 morass, harassed by all kinds of tropical pests and encompassed by 

 hidden dangers. 



" When I reached Suban again," says Mr Bickmore,* " I felt a 

 peculiar smarting and itching sensation at the ankles, and found my 

 stockings red with blood. Turning them down I found both anliles 

 perfectly fringed with blood-suckers, some of which had filled them- 

 selves until they seemed ready to burst. One had even crawled iktwn 

 to my foot and made an incision which allowed the blood to pom" out 

 through my canvas shoe. All this day we have suffered from these 

 disgusting pests, our horses became quite striped with their own blood, 

 and a dog that followed us looked as if he had run through a pool of 

 clotted gore before we reached the highway again. Of all the pests I 

 have experienced in the Tropics, or in any land, whether mosquitoes, 

 blackflies, ants, snakes, or viler vermin, these are most annoying and 

 disgusting." 



And Mr. Wallace tells us f how, when the rains began at Celebes, 

 " numbers of huge millipedes, as thick as one's finger and eight or 

 ten inches long, crawled about everywhere, in the paths, on trees, 

 about the houses ; " and how he found, on rising one morning, that 

 he had had one of them for a bedfellow ! 



In regard to trials and dangers, both travellers have their stories 

 to narrate. Mr. Wallace tells his in modest and unafi'ected language 

 and without any pretensions to heroism, whilst. Mr. Bickmore uses 

 such incidents for book-making purposes ; and according to his own 

 account, the Professor of Natural History at Madison University 

 must have been as courageous as he was gallant, for whilst the 

 terrible monsters of the animal kingdom fell beneath the blows of 

 his axe, and his coolness was the admiration of the native men, we 

 have the blushing confession that he was singled out by the dark 

 beauties as the favoured object of their " osculatory salutes." But it 

 is quite obvious to any one who has read the two works with care 

 that the author who lays claim to the greatest coolness and courage, 

 in reality experienced less opportunities for the exercise of either 

 faculty : as to the osculatory business, we doubt not that the dark 

 beauties did exhibit their good taste, and for the reason assigned by 

 Mr. Bickmore, namely, as " they might never again have the 

 privilege of kissing a gentleman with a white face." X The contrast 

 between the style of the two writers is best seen in the description 

 given by each of them, of an adventure he had with a python. Mr. 

 Wallace discovered his snake in the roof within a yard of his head. 



" Ho was compactly coiled up in a kind of knot ; and I coidd detect 

 his head and his bright eyes in the very centre of the folds. The 



* Bickmore, pp. 492-3. t Wallace, vol. i., p. 376. 



X Bickmore, p. 193. 



