Alfred Russel Wallace 



a pirate fleet, which was eventually destroyed by a Sara- 

 wak Government steamer with the following result of the 

 fight : 190 pirates and 140 captives were killed or drowned, 

 and 250 of the latter were liberated and sent to their homes ; 

 showing how formidable these pirates were. But Wallace, 

 absorbed in his scientific pursuits, minded not these dangers, 

 nor the hardships of any kind which a roving life in untrod- 

 den jungles and feverish swamps brings. 



When Walla€e left Sarawak after his fifteen months' 

 residence in the country, he left his young assistant, 

 Charles Allen, there. He entered my service, and re- 

 mained some time after the formation of the Borneo 

 Company. Later, he again joined Wallace, and then went 

 to New Guinea, doing valuable collecting and exploring 

 work. He finally settled in Singapore, where I met him 

 in 1899. He had married and was doing well ; but died 

 not long after my interview with him. He had come to 

 the East with Wallace as a lad of 16, and had been his 

 faithful companion and assistant during years of arduous 

 work. — L. V. H. 



The eight years spent by Wallace in this almost un- 

 known part of the world were times of strenuous mental 

 and physical exertion, resulting in the gathering together 

 of an enormous amount of matter for future scientific in- 

 vestigation, but counterbalanced unfortunately by more or 

 less continuous ill-health — which at times made the effort 

 of clear reasoning and close application to scientific pur- 

 suits extremely difficult. 



An indication of the unwearying application with 

 which he went about his task is seen in the fact that 

 during this period he collected 125,660 specimens of 

 natural history, travelled about 14,000 miles within the 

 Archipelago, and made sixty or seventy journeys, ^' each 

 involving some preparation and loss of time,'' so that 

 '* not more than six years were really occupied in collect- 

 ing." 



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