The great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) traveled widely in what was then called the East Indies and which we now know as Malaysia and Indonesia. Between 1854 and 1862 he wandered from Sumatra to New Guinea, earning his living as a bird-skin collector. He was also taking notes and keeping journals, and in 1869 he published "The Malay Archipelago," one of the most delightful of travel accounts.
"Borneo, Celebes, Aru" is a part of that account; the early sightings of such spectacularly pristine flora and fauna -- the orchids and the butterflies, the fruit, and the families of orangutans. (Though our pleasure in the latter is considerably challenged by Wallace's habit of shooting every one of the animals he meets.)
Another part of our pleasure in Wallace's book lies in the nature of the naturalist himself. Presented with an earthquake he does not run about: "The house began shaking with a very gentle, but rapidly increasing motion. I sat still enjoying the novel sensation for some seconds." Subjected to the stench of the durian fruit, he digs in and then pronounces that "in fact, to eat durians is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the East to experience."