knighted by the British government and in 1841 the Sultan of Brunei granted him the
title Rajah of Sarawak.
Wallace approached the Royal Geographic Society to sponsor his voyage to
Singapore and proposed to spend a year in each of six groups of the islands – Borneo,
the Philippines, Celebes (Sulawesi), Timor, the Moluccas (Maluku) and New Guinea
- to investigate their natural history. His application was read before the Committee
on Expeditions and after some discussion it was resolved that:
In order to enable Mr Wallace to prosecute with success the scientific objects of his
voyage, Sir Roderick Murchison be requested to apply to HM’s Government to grant Mr
Wallace a free passage to Singapore and to procure letters of introduction for him from the
Governments of Spain and Holland to their East India Colonies.After his application was successful, Wallace recruited a sixteen-year-old assistant,
Charles Allen, and in March 1854 they sailed with first-class tickets to the Far East
and the British-ruled Straits Settlements. Singapore was the regional entrepot for all
the trade coming from China and across the archipelago, and in its streets and around
its harbour he found the Chinese, Malays, Indians, Arabs, Javanese and Sumatrans
who traded in the islands’ products, as well as the English and Dutch colonialists who
ruled these lands. The energetic Chinese were busy cutting down the forest in the
central part of the island for timber to build the expanding colony and to clear space
for plantations of pepper, nutmeg and gambir for export. He found accommodation
on the outskirts of the settlement in a Jesuit mission near Bukit Timah (Tin Hill) and
began collecting all the insects and beetles that were thriving in the piles of bark
and sawdust left by the woodcutters. Wallace describes his and Charles Allen’s daily
routines:
Get up at half-past five, bath, and coffee. Sit down to arrange and put away my insects of the day
before, and set them in a safe place to dry. Charles [assistant] mends our insect nets, fills
our pin-cushions, and gets ready for the day. Breakfast at eight; out to the jungle at nine.
We have to walk up a steep hill to reach it, and arrive dripping with perspiration. Then we
wander about in the delightful shade along paths made by the Chinese woodcutters till two
or three in the afternoon, generally returning with fifty or sixty beetles, some very rare or
beautiful, and perhaps a few butterflies. Change clothes to sit down to kill and pin insects,
Charles doing the flies, wasps and bugs; I do not trust him yet with the beetles. Dinner at
four, then at work again until six. Then read or talk, or, if insects are very numerous, work
again till eight or nine. Then to bed.Alfred Russel Wallace – In Singapore and Borneo 129