Where Australia Collides with AsiaStevens who was himself a collector of British butterflies and beetles. Stevens proved
an exemplary agent, selling their duplicate specimens ‘to the best advantage’ and
insuring their consignments as soon as they could advise of despatch. He purchased
equipment they needed, found means of getting cash or credit to them in the most
obscure places, advanced them funds against specimens not yet received, and kept
them up to date on what collectors were looking for and matters of general scientific
interest. He was honest, trustworthy, efficient, anticipated their needs and for this
Wallace and Bates were eternally grateful.
Their decision to travel to the Amazon was settled when they both read a recently
published book by W.H. Edwards entitled A Voyage up the Amazon. Edwards wrote
enthusiastically about the beauty and dangers of the Amazon, including the full range
of travellers’ tales of Amazonian women, cannibal Indians, dangerous anacondas and
flesh-eating piranhas. These stories did not seem to deter Wallace and Bates, who
must have focused on his glorious descriptions of the Amazon River Basin – ‘Where
the mightiest of rivers rolls majestically through primeval forests of boundless extent,
concealing, yet bringing forth the most beautiful and varied forms of animal and
vegetable existence’.
106
http://www.ebook3000.com