It ought not to be forgotten, however, how great were
the difficulties, the dangers and the cost of travel fifty years
ago, compared with the facilities now enjoyed by his successors,
who can command steam and motor transport to wellnigh any spot on
the coasts of the globe, and who have to their hand concentrated
and preserved foods, a surer knowledge of the causes of tropical
diseases, and outfits of non-perishable medicines sufficient for
many years within the space of a few cubic inches. Commissariat
and health are the keys to all exploration in uncivilised regions.
Wallace accomplished his work on the shortest of commons and lay
weeks at a time sick through inability to replenish his medical
stores.
He was no mere "trudger" over new lands. Where those before him,
and even many after him, have been able to see only sterile
objects, his discerning eyes perceived everywhere a meaning in
the varying modes of organic life, and in response to his
sympathetic mind Nature revealed to him more of her multitudinous
secrets than to most others. Wallace's Amazonian travels were far
from unfruitful, in spite of the irreparable loss he sustained in
the burning of his notes and the bulk of his collections in the
vessel by which he was returning home; but it was in the Malay
Archipelago that his most celebrated years of investigation were
passed, which marked him as one of the greatest naturalists of our
time.
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