other matters being satisfactorily settled, they eventually sailed from
Liverpool on April 20th in a barque of 192 tons, said to be "a very fast
sailer," which proved to be correct. On arriving at Para about a month
later, they immediately set about finding a house, learning something of
the language, the habits of the people amongst whom they had come to
live, and making short excursions into the forest before starting on
longer and more trying explorations up country.

Wallace's previous vivid imaginings of what life in the tropics would
mean, so far as the surpassing beauty of nature was concerned, were not
immediately fulfilled. As a starting-point, however, Para had many
advantages. Besides the pleasant climate, the country for some hundreds
of miles was found to be nearly level at an elevation of about 30 or 40
ft. above the river; the first distinct rise occurring some 150 miles up
the river Tocantins, south-west of Para; the whole district was
intersected by streams, with cross channels connecting them, access by
this means being comparatively easy to villages and estates lying
farther inland.

Before making an extensive excursion into the interior, he spent some
time on the larger islands at the mouth of the Amazon, on one of which
he immediately noticed the scarcity of trees, while "the abundance of
every kind of animal life crowded into a small space was here very
striking, compared with the sparse manner in which it is scattered in
the virgin forests. It seems to force us to the conclusion that the
luxuriance of tropical vegetation is not favourable to the production of
animal life. The plains are always more thickly peopled than the forest;
and a temperate zone, as has been pointed out by Mr. Darwin, seems
better adapted to the support of large land animals than the tropics."