Early Letters 



ferred to stay. I hardly know whether to be glad or sorry 

 he has left. It saves me a great deal of trouble and annoy- 

 ance, and I feel it quite a relief to be without him. On the 

 other hand, it is a considerable loss for me, as he had just 

 begun to be valuable in collecting. I must now try and teach 

 a China boy to collect and pin insects. My collections in 

 Borneo have been very good, but some of them will, I fear, 

 be injured by the long voyages of the ships. I have col- 

 lected upwards of 25,000 insects, besides birds, shells, quad- 

 rupeds, and plants. The day I arrived here a vessel sailed 

 for Macassar, and I fear I shall not have another chance 

 for two months unless I go a roundabout way, and per- 

 haps not then, so I have hardly made up my mind what to 

 do.— Your affectionate brother, Alfred R. Wallace. 



To His Brother-in-LaW;, Thomas Sims 



Singapore. [Probably about March, 1856.] 



Dear Thomas, — . . . You and Fanny talk of my 

 coming back for a trilling sore as if I was within an 

 omnibus ride of Conduit St. I am now perfectly well, 

 and only waiting to go eastward. The far east is to 

 me what the far west is to the Americans. They both 

 meet in California, where I hope to arrive some day. I 

 quite enjoy being a few days at Singapore now. The 

 scene is at once so familiar and strange. The half -naked 

 Chinese coolies, the neat shopkeepers, the clean, fat, old, 

 long-tailed merchants, all as busy and full of business a« 

 any Londoners. Then the handsome Klings, who alway^ 

 ask double what they take, and with whom it is most amus- 

 ing to bargain. The crowd of boatmen at the ferry, a dozer 

 begging and disputing for a farthing fare, the Americans, 

 the Malays, and the Portuguese make up a scene doubly 

 interesting to me now that I know something about them 



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