Wallace was in Sarawak at the happy period in the country's
history. It was beginning to emerge from barbarism. The Borneo
Company was just formed, and the seed of the country's future
prosperity was sown. Wallace, therefore, found us all sanguine and
cheerful; yet we were on the brink of a disaster which brought
many sorrows in its train. But the misfortunes of the Chinese
revolt had not yet cast their shadows before them. The Rajah's
white guests round his hospitable table; the Malay chiefs and
office-holders, who made evening calls from curiosity or to pay
their respects; Dyaks squatting in dusky groups in corners of the
hall, with petitions to make or advice to seek from their white
ruler--such would be the gathering of which Wallace would form a
part. No suspicion or foreboding would trouble the company; yet
within a few months that hall would be given to the flames of an
enemy's torch, and the Rajah himself and many of those who formed
that company would be fugitives in the jungle....

The Malay Archipelago, in the unregenerated days when Wallace
roamed the forests, and sailed the Straits in native boats and
canoes, was full of danger to wanderers of the white race. Anarchy
prevailed in many parts; usurping nobles enslaved the people in
their houses; and piratical fleets scoured the sea, capturing and
enslaving yearly thousands of peaceful traders, women and
children. The writer was himself in 1862 besieged in a Bornean
river by a pirate fleet, which was eventually destroyed by a
Sarawak Government steamer with the following result of the fight:
190 pirates and 140 captives were killed or drowned, and 250 of
the latter were liberated and sent to their homes; showing how
formidable these pirates were. But Wallace, absorbed in his
scientific pursuits, minded not these dangers, nor the hardships