Here, also, as showing towards what goal Wallace’s mind was travelling: “I begin to feel dissatisfied with a mere local collection. I should like to take some one family to study thoroughly, principally with a view to the theory of the origin of species.”

The two friends had often discussed schemes for going abroad to explore some unharvested region, and at last these took definite shape, mainly through the interest excited by a little book, published by John Murray in 1847, entitled A Voyage up the River Amazons, including a Residence at Para, by Mr. W. H. Edwards, an American tourist. It led to Wallace proposing to Bates a joint expedition to the river Amazons for the purpose of exploring the Natural History of its banks; the plan being to make a collection of objects, dispose of the duplicates in London to pay expenses, and gather facts, as Mr. Wallace expressed it in one of his letters, “towards solving the problem of the origin of species.” T

The choice was a happy one, for, except by the German zoologist Von Spix, and the botanist Von Martius, in 1817-20,f and subsequently by Count de Castelnau, no exploration of a region so rich and interesting to the biologist had been attempted. Early in 1848 Bates and Wallace met in London to study South American animals and plants in the principal collections, and afterwards went to Chatsworth to gain information about orchids, which they proposed to collect in the moist tropical forests and send home. On April 26th, 1848, they embarked at Liverpool in a barque of only 192 tons burthen, one of the few traders to Para, to which seaport of the Amazons region a swift passage, “straight as an arrow,” brought them on May 28th. In some unpublished notes,

“ Ars est celare artem.” What labour writing was to Darwin is told in the Zi and Letters, vol. i., pp. 99, 152-4. } Vide Preface, p. vii. t Zravels in Brazil, 2 vols. (Longmans), 1824.

apparently belonging to a lecture, Bates gives the following delightful picture:—

‘*We arrived on the morning of one of the numerous Roman Catholic festival days, which are here celebrated with great pomp, and whilst we were looking on the magical scene at sunrise,—the city, the broad glassy river, studded with richly-wooded islands, resting like floating gardens on the water, the crowd of native canoes with the motley clusters of half-naked people of all shades in colour of skin,—whilst we were absorbed in the contemplation of these novel sights, the bells of the numerous churches began a lively peal, trumpets sounded, sky-rockets whizzed in the air, and guns boomed from the forts and shipping. It was a pleasant introduction to our new home. All the sights and sounds showed us we had come to a land where perpetual summer, warmth, verdure, and genial nature invited the inhabitants to a life of pleasure rather than one of anxiety and toil.’’

The travellers soon settled in a voctaha,or country-house, a mile and a half from Para, and close to the forest, which came down to their doors. Like other towns along the Amazons, Para stands on ground cleared from the forest that stretches, a well-nigh pathless tangle of luxuriant primeval vegetation, two thousand miles inland to the foot of the Andes. The immediate suburbs were first explored; but all around was a naturalist’s paradise—a virgin forest swarming with life. Of butterflies alone the harvest was plenteous Seven hundred species were found within an hour’s walk of the town, “ whilst the total number in the British Isles does not exceed 66, and the whole of Europe supports only 390.” Bates thus summarises the general features of the country in his journal:—

‘*A dense, impenetrable, and uninterrupted forest round Para and all along the river banks, the underwood solely composed of younger plants of the trees; a few spores of elegant ferns clothe the fallen trees, and a lycopodium carpets scantily the ground; this, when we add the climbing trees which connect tree to tree throughout the wilderness with a vast, intricate mass of vegetable cordage, and the parasitic plants, which are almost exclusively composed of numerous species of tillandsias and aracez, will be a description of the uniform appearance of the sombre forest of the banks of the Amazons, the only perceptible difference in the general aspect of the forest being between the moist and dry portions of it.’’

Para was a convenient centre of excursions, and there Bates resided altogether about a year and a half. He also, as will be seen, returned there from longer journeys, to procure supplies and ship his collections to England. These, although comprising chiefly insects, included various specimens—mammal skins, alii-gators’ skulls, turtles, and birds; one barrel, noted in his journal of

December 24th, 1852, containing “129 fishes, 12 snakes, 14 lizards, 29 batrachians, and 2 alligators.” Drafts on Mr. S. Stevens, the London agent, were encashed by a Para firm, and part of the proceeds spent in purchasing cloth and sundry small wares used in exchange for products and food among the Indians. Six months of Para life set Bates longing for “ fresh woods.” Under date of December 3rd, 1848, he writes in his journal as follows:—

‘©The woods are no longer novel to me. I pass under the shadow of the gigantic arborescent arums in the swampy woods of Olerea, tear through the twining bandinia, pass by the gorgeous foliage of epiphytous aracee—of many species; see the rich mantle of climbing pear and convolvuli toppling over the high palings of the suburbs, the green drapery that sweeps down from the tops of trees to the earth, concealing their trunks, on the forest border; the glorious crowns of the palms, murumurt, coco, arrai, jupati, tucuni, and other species, all found in the suburbs, some of their trunks ornamented with pendants of graceful ferns; the massy clumps of parasitic tillandsias and bromelias; the airy, golden-flowered cassias in Una road; with the twining passion flowers; the spacious shield leaf of cecropia; the feathery foliage of mimosa, the numerous species of melastoma, some of which are generally in flower—all these things are commonplace to me now. I want to be off to witness other novelties.”’

The first of Bates’s minor expeditions was up the river Tocantins, one of the largest of the twenty noble streams that feed the Great River. He returned to Para at the end of January 1849, to find a “complete settlement of all suspense and anxiety” as to non-receipt of news. Letters from the London agent reported good sale of consignments, “the completest satisfaction seeming to have resulted on all sides,’ and thus cheered, the work of collecting went on daily. “I enjoy my rambles more than ever,” he records in his journal, March 27th, 1849, “and glad to escape from the little and temporary affairs of this wretched nest of men into the eternal and grand scenes of the forest by which it is hemmed in. Although obliged to apply the attention closely to the details of most species, yet I do not forget the connection which the philosophical study of their forms has with the whole organic creation.” One of his letters to the Zoologzst thus describes his equipment for daily work:—

‘* Between g and Io A.M. I prepare for the woods: a coloured shirt, pair of trousers, pair of common boots, and an old hat, are all my clothing; over my left shoulder slings my double-barrelled gun, loaded, one with No. 10, one with No. 4 shot. In my right hand I take my net; on my left side

is suspended a leathern bag with two pockets, one for my insect box, the other for powder and two sorts of shot; on my right side hangs my ‘ game bag,’ an ornamental affair, with red leather trappings and thongs to hang lizards, snakes, frogs, or large birds; one small pocket in this bag contains my caps; another, papers for wrapping up the delicate birds; others for wads, cotton, box of powdered plaister, and a box with damped cork for the microlepidoptera; to my shirt is pinned my pincushion, with six sizes of pins.”’

In the following June he made a second trip up the Tocantins to Cameta, where he stayed a month, suffering in health from irregular living and fatigue. On September 5th he embarked in the Santa Maria, a two-masted vzgzlinga, on a voyage to the interior, following the main stream as far as Santarem and Obydos, in which district he subsequently spent three years. The speed of the current through the “narrows ” that lead to the main Amazons made progress slow and tedious before the introduction of steamers, and it was effected only by espia, or warping.

‘‘Two men took a coil of rope, with small boat, to a distance ahead, secured one end of rope to a bough on river’s edge, then paddled back, bringing the other end of rope to the crew on board. These pulled up to the point ahead, the men on board gathering in the rope into the boat, and going away to repeat same process’’ (Journal, September 28th).

It is superfluous to give a dry abstract of matters which are narrated with fulness and freshness in the Travels, and here it suffices to say that on reaching Barra, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, one thousand miles from Para, in March 1850, Bates and Wallace, who was accompanied by his younger brother, parted company, “ finding it more convenient to explore separate districts and collect independently.” Wallace took the northern parts and tributaries of the Amazons,* and Bates kept to the main stream, which, from the direction it seems to take at the fork of the Rio Negro, is called the Upper Amazons or the Solimoens. Different in character and climatic conditions from the Lower Amazons, it flows through a “ vast plain about a thousand miles in length, and five hundred or six hundred miles in breadth, covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious, and humid forest.”

Bates had been robbed of a good portion of his money on his voyage to Obydos.

Mr. Wallace returned to England in 1852, and in 1853 published an account of his journey under the title of Zravels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. An excellent reprint of that book in cheap form was issued last year (1891).

‘‘T have now,”’ he says in his Journal, January roth, 1850, ‘‘only £11 for my expenses at Barra, and payment of passage. Shall not be able to stay there till the fine season, and be obliged to return to Para without forming a good collection after @// this toil in ascending the river. Shows what a booby I am at travelling. Undertaking this voyage without letters of credit from S. & Co., of Para. But my gains were so uncertain, I did not like to ask for credit.’’;

Fortunately he met at Barra, among other Europeans, Messrs. Bradley and Williams, of whom he writes as follows in his journal, March 12th:—

“‘They are two men of business, trading between Peru and Para; clever, good-natured iellows. Am indebted to them for encouragement to go and collect on the Solimoens, and advances of little money to enable me to do it, so that I have resolved to stay up here some time further. They keep free table here whilst detained a few weeks on business, and fine frolicking goes forward almost every day.’’

He embarked at Barra on March 26th, in a cuderta for Ega, three hundred and seventy miles distant, arriving on May-day, 1850. There he stayed more than a year, busily collecting, but depressed through bad health, poverty, and isolation. Twelve months had passed without the receipt of letters or remittances; his clothes were worn to rags; he was shoeless, and, through robbery by a servant, penniless. “I am a prisoner here; at this season (Journal, September 5th) no vessels descend to the city, on account of the trade winds blowing strong up river; am in greatest uncertainty whether Bradley will return and bring me money. I am reduced to low ebb.” Worse even than these ills to one who, imbued with the spirit of Abou ben Adhem, “loved his fellow-men,” was the absence of intellectual society; so that, to use his own words, life became “almost insupportable.” In a letter dated December 23rd, 1850 (printed in the Zoologzst, vol. ix., Pp. 3143), he announces his intention to return home.

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