My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO 187assured I should easily reach my destination. Bythis delay, which seemed to me at the time a misfortune,I was enabled to make some very interestingcollections in Bali and Lombok, two islands which Ishould otherwise never have seen.I was thus enabledto determine the exact boundary between two ofthe primary zoological regions, the Oriental and theAustralian, and also to see the only existing remnantof the Hindu race and religion, and of the old civilizationwhich had erected the wonderful ruined templesin Java centuries before the Mohammedan invasionof the archipelago.After two months and a half in Lombok, I founda passage to Macassar, which I reached the beginningof September, and lived there nearly three months,when I left for the Aru Islands in a native prau. Thecountry around Macassar greatly disappointed me, asit was perfectly flat and all cultivated as rice fields,the only sign of woods being the palm and fruit treesin the suburbs of Macassar and others marking thesites of native villages. I had letters to a Dutchmerchant who spoke English as well as Malay andthe Bugis language of Celebes, and who was quitefriendly with the native rajah of the adjacent territory.Through his good offices I was enabled to stay at anative village about eight miles inland, where therewere some patches of forest, and where I at onceobtained some of the rare birds and insects peculiarto Celebes. After about a month I returned toMacassar, and found that I could obtain a passage tothe celebrated Aru Islands, where at least two speciesof birds of paradise are found, and which had neverbeen visited by an English collector. This was apiece of good fortune I had not expected, and it wasespecially so because the next six months would be