‘palisade’ of leaves and lianas. They knew that here, deep in the rainforest, there is no
better place to observe all the plants, insects and animals that make up the magnificent
web of life on earth and could not wait until they finally reached the town of Santarém
at the junction of the Amazon and the River Tapajós.
The diversity of butterflies in this new location seemed endless. They spent
three productive months collecting the beautiful butterflies and strange beetles
around Santarém and were delighted to find many specimens they had not seen in
the collections in London. Habitat seemed to be important and Wallace noted that
the varieties of insects, birds and monkeys differed from place to place for reasons
that were not immediately apparent and he kept asking himself questions. Why were
certain monkeys only on one side of the Amazon? Why should winged creatures stick
to a particular terrain? They were living out their dream and after a successful morning
collecting they could cool off on the banks of the river, as according to Wallace:
The Tapajós here is clear water with a sandy beach, and the bathing is luxurious; we bathe
here in the middle of the day, when dripping with perspiration, and you can have no idea of
the excessive luxury of it.There is an awful lot of coffee in Brazil and Wallace soon became addicted to his
morning coffee. He writes about how he once ran out of coffee and went down to the
cottage of an old Indian who could speak a little Portuguese and begged him to get
some coffee – ‘Por amor de Dios’:
There were some ripe berries on the trees, the sun was shining out, and he promised to set
his little girl to work immediately. This was about ten in the morning. I went into the forest,
and by about four returned, and found that my coffee was ready. It had been gathered, the
pulp washed off, dried in the sun, husked, roasted, and pounded in a mortar; and in half an
hour more I enjoyed one of the most delicious cups of coffee I have ever tasted.After this idyllic period the group decided to separate. Perhaps it was the arrival
of Herbert that caused some friction between the two friends. Perhaps it was the
differences in character that grew more significant in the wilds of the Amazon than in
Leicester or London. Bates was more sociable, enjoying the company of other people,
especially the ladies, and was happy to stay in one place for many months. Wallace
was the loner, driven to travel further and further into the interior of the Amazon basin
in search of rarer and rarer specimens.
The Wallace brothers decided to travel another 600 kilometres upstream to Barra
(Manaus) a small settlement lying at the confluence of the Amazon and the Rio Negro.
Alfred Russel Wallace – The Voyages on the Amazon 109