UK explorer lauds 19th-century Wallace

UK explorer lauds 19th-century Wallace

By Jim Della-Giacoma

MANADO, Indonesia (Reuter): British explorer Tim Severin has
just completed a three-month voyage on a traditional fishing boat
through Indonesia's remote Spice Islands.

But it was not the rigors of traveling on his wooden Kai
Islands boat or the allure of deserted beaches and uninhabited
lush tropical islands that held his attention during the odyssey.

Severin said his retracing of the Spice Island voyages of
19th-century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had opened
for him the windows of a tropical world where rare and exotic
species still abound. He said his travels were a journey in the
footsteps of an intellectual giant.

Tanned and taut after traveling 1,900 km (1,200 miles),
Severin and his crew arrived in Manado town on Indonesia's
Sulawesi island in early June after setting out from the Kai
Islands three months earlier.

"We've all come back with respect for Wallace. He was
prescient in so many ways," Severin told Reuters aboard his two-
masted replica of a traditional Kai Islands wooden boat,
specially built for the expedition.

"He was not your Victorian explorer with a Bible and a
shotgun," he said.

Severin's team of artists, photographers and biologists was
due to head home yesterday after wrapping up their expedition
with visits to land-based national parks near Manado.

Wallace paid for his six years of expeditions (1854-1862) by
collecting rare animals and sending back them back to England.

But Severin, a Briton settled in Ireland, said Wallace cared
for the environment and had deep respect for traditional
cultures, which was rare in his time.

Wallace concluded his classic 1869 travelogue and summary of
his scientific work, The Malay Archipelago, by observing that the
morally dubious society of Victorian England had much to learn
from the Orient's "uncivilized savages" of the Orient.

Upon publication, the lengthy book became a best-seller and
made Wallace a celebrity. It remains in print.

"Wallace was extraordinarily decent. It shines through all the
time that this is a hell of a nice guy," he said.

Amid the discomfort and difficulties of traveling in regions
then barely touched by the modern world, Wallace maintained his
sense of humor as he slugged through the mud or battled with
fever.

"He pictured himself wearing glasses, stumbling through the
jungle, running into spiders' webs and tripping over roots with
the local guides laughing at him," Severin said.

By collecting insects, animals and plants as he traversed what
is now Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, Wallace formed ground-
breaking theories on natural selection.

Wallace line

He was also the first to identify the zones in the archipelago
where animals of Asian origin ended and those of Australasian
origin began. This line, running north-south and found east of
the islands of Kalimantan and Bali, is known as the "Wallace
line".

Modern scientists have largely moved away from Wallace's sharp
divisions because they say animals and plants in the archipelago
are divided into zones of transition.

But Wallace unknowingly created a new division of science,
bio-geography, and the zones of transition of plants and animals
are now known as Wallacea in his honor.

Severin said Wallace's book stands the test of time after his
team revisited many of the places described in it.

"What is clear is that an awful lot of what Wallace described
is still here. It really hasn't changed very much and indeed in a
couple of places it's actually better than what he saw," he said.

"He comes across as a very accurate and good descriptive
writer, but also he did have a sense of theater and he describes
things in a very flamboyant way," Severin added.

The voyage, dubbed In Search of Wallace, will be the basis of
a book and television documentary on the British naturalist.

"It's a biography-travel book as I would like to bring Wallace
to the attention of readers," Severin said.

Severin, an Oxford history graduate who has made a career of
retracing famous journeys, believes Wallace's genius has been
hidden by the naturalist's humility.

"He was so perceptive about the theory of evolution, without
consulting other people," Severin said.

"He worked in isolation, compared to Charles Darwin who
arrived at the theory through constant correspondence with other
scientists, including Wallace," he said.

"Wallace came to his theories independently in the back of
beyond and that is a very bright guy."

But even before publishing a book, Severin has allowed
hundreds of Irish schoolchildren and thousands of Internet users
to find Wallace on his homepage.

As he sailed through the Maluku Islands, Severin used a
satellite link and notebook computer to link up with educators
from the University of Limerick who ran the Spice Islands
Homepage (http://www.iol.ie/spice/homepage.htm).

The home page, with voyage maps, pictures and messages, made
Wallace and his work widely accessible around the globe.

"I would have found Wallace if I succeed in making other
people find him," Severin said.