Alfred Russel Wallace 



and can talk to them in the general language of the place. 

 The streets of Singapore on a fine day are as crowded and 

 busy as Tottenham Court Koad, and from the variety of 

 nations and occupations far more interesting. I am more 

 convinced than ever that no one can appreciate a new 

 country in a short visit. After two years in the country 

 I only now begin to understand Singapore and to marvel 

 at the life and bustle, the varied occupations, and strange 

 population, on a spot which so short a time ago was an 

 uninhabited jungle. . . . — Yours affectionately, 



Alfred E. Wallace. 



To His Sister, Mrs. Sims 



Singapore. April 21, 1856. 



My dear Fanny, — I believe I wrote to you last mail, and 

 have now little to say except that I am still a prisoner in 

 Singapore and unable to get away to my land of promise, 

 Macassar, with whose celebrated oil you are doubtless 

 acquainted. I have been spending three weeks with my 

 old friend the French missionary, going daily into the 

 jungle, and fasting on Fridays on omelet and vegetables, 

 a most wholesome custom which I think the Protestants 

 were wrong to leave off. I have been reading Huc^s travels 

 in China in French, and talking with a French missionary 

 just arrived from Tonquin. I have thus obtained a great 

 deal of information about these countries and about the 

 extent of the Catholic missions in them, which is astonish- 

 ing. How is it that they do their work so much more 

 thoroughly than the Protestant missionaries ? In Cochin 

 China, Tonquin, and China, where all Christian mission- 

 aries are obliged to live in secret and are subject to perse- 

 cution, expulsion, and often death, yet every province, even 

 those farthest in the interior of China, have their regular 



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