LITTLE C^sQ^^ARLY in 1854, Wallace reached Asia. He 

 JOURNEYS vffij\(($& had decided that he would make the first, 



and the best collection of the flora & fauna 

 of the Malay Archipelago that it was 

 possible to make. White men had skirted 

 the coast of many of the islands, but as to 

 what there was inland was mostly conjecture and 

 guesswork. 



How long it would take Wallace to make his Malay- 

 sian natural history survey he did not know, but in a 

 letter to Darwin he stated that he expected to be ab- 

 sent from England at least two years. 

 He was gone eight years, & during this time, walked, 

 paddled or rode horseback fifteen thousand miles, and 

 visited many islands never before trod by the foot of 

 a white man. 



The city of Singapore served him as a base or head- 

 quarters, because from there he could catch trading 

 ships that plied among the islands of the Archipelago; 

 and to Singapore he could also ship and there store 

 his specimens. 



From Singapore he made sixty separate voyages of 

 discovery jfc ^ 



In all he sent home to England over a hundred and 

 twenty-five thousand natural history specimens, in- 

 cluding about ten thousand birds, which later on, were 

 all stuffed and mounted under his skillful direction. 

 Q On returning to England, Wallace took six years in 

 preparation of his book "The Malay Archipelago," a 

 most stupendous literary undertaking, that covers the 

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