The Malay Archipelago, vol 1 | Page 5

of
natural history, both for my private collection and to supply duplicates
to museums and amateurs, I will give a general statement of the
number of specimens I collected, and which reached home in good
condition. I must premise that I generally employed one or two, and
sometimes three Malay servants to assist me; and for nearly half the
time had the services of an English lad, Charles Allen. I was just eight
years away from England, but as I travelled about fourteen thousand
miles within the Archipelago, and made sixty or seventy separate
journeys, each involving some preparation and loss of time, I do not
think that more than six years were really occupied in collecting.
I find that my Eastern collections amounted to:
310 specimens of Mammalia. 100 specimens of Reptiles. 8,050
specimens of Birds. 7,500 specimens of Shells. 13,100 specimens of
Lepidoptera. 83,200 specimens of Coleoptera. 13,400 specimens of
other Insects.
125,660 specimens of natural history in all.
It now only remains for me to thank all those friends to whom I am
indebted for assistance or information. My thanks are more especially
due to the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, through whose
valuable recommendations I obtained important aid from our own

Government and from that of Holland; and to Mr. William Wilson
Saunders, whose kind and liberal encouragement in the early portion of
my journey was of great service to me. I am also greatly indebted to Mr.
Samuel Stevens (who acted as my agent), both for the care he took of
my collections, and for the untiring assiduity with which he kept me
supplied, both with useful information and with whatever necessaries I
required.
I trust that these, and all other friends who have been in any way
interested in my travels and collections, may derive from the perusal of
my book, some faint reflexion of the pleasures I myself enjoyed amid
the scenes and objects it describes.
THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.
CHAPTER I.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.
From a look at a globe or a map of the Eastern hemisphere, we shall
perceive between Asia and Australia a number of large and small
islands forming a connected group distinct from those great masses of
land, and having little connection with either of them. Situated upon the
Equator, and bathed by the tepid water of the great tropical oceans, this
region enjoys a climate more uniformly hot and moist than almost any
other part of the globe, and teems with natural productions which are
elsewhere unknown. The richest of fruits and the most precious of
spices are Indigenous here. It produces the giant flowers of the
Rafflesia, the great green-winged Ornithoptera (princes among the
butterfly tribes), the man-like Orangutan, and the gorgeous Birds of
Paradise. It is inhabited by a peculiar and interesting race of
mankind--the Malay, found nowhere beyond the limits of this insular
tract, which has hence been named the Malay Archipelago.
To the ordinary Englishman this is perhaps the least known part of the
globe. Our possessions in it are few and scanty; scarcely any of our
travellers go to explore it; and in many collections of maps it is almost
ignored, being divided between Asia and the Pacific Islands. It thus

happens that few persons realize that, as a whole, it is comparable with
the primary divisions of the globe, and that some of its separate islands
are larger than France or the Austrian Empire. The traveller, however,
soon acquires different ideas. He sails for days or even weeks along the
shores of one of these great islands, often so great that its inhabitants
believe it to be a vast continent. He finds that voyages among these
islands are commonly reckoned by weeks and months, and that their
several inhabitants are often as little known to each other as are the
native races of the northern to those of the southern continent of
America. He soon comes to look upon this region as one apart from the
rest of the world, with its own races of men and its own aspects of
nature; with its own ideas, feelings, customs, and modes of speech, and
with a climate, vegetation, and animated life altogether peculiar to
itself.
From many points of view these islands form one compact
geographical whole, and as such they have always been treated by
travellers and men of science; but, a more careful and detailed study of
them under various aspects reveals the unexpected fact that they are
divisible into two portions nearly equal in extent which differ widely in
their natural products, and really form two parts of the primary
divisions of the earth. I have been able to prove this in considerable
detail by my observations on the natural history of the various parts of
the Archipelago; and, as in the