nd sailed for England the
following July. The ship took fire at sea, and all his treasures (not
previously sent to England) were unhappily lost. Ten days and nights
were spent in an open boat before another vessel picked them up, and in
describing this terrible experience he says: "When the danger appeared
past I began to feel the greatness of my loss. With what pleasure had I
looked upon every rare and curious insect I had added to my collection!
How many times, when almost overcome by the ague, had I crawled into the
forest and been rewarded by some unknown and beautiful species! How
many places, which no European foot but my own had trodden, would have
been recalled to my memory by the rare birds and insects they had
furnished to my collection! How many weary days and weeks had I passed,
upheld only by the fond hope of bringing home many new and beautiful
forms from these wild regions ... which would prove that I had not
wasted the advantage I had enjoyed, and would give me occupation and
amusement for many years to come! And now ... I had not one specimen to
illustrate the unknown lands I had trod, or to call back the
recollection of the wild scenes I had beheld! But such regrets were vain
... and I tried to occupy myself with the state of things which actually
existed."[7]

On reaching London, Wallace took a house in Upper Albany Street, where
his mother and his married sister (Mrs. Sims), with her husband, a
photographer, came to live with him. The next eighteen months were fully
occupied with sorting and arranging such collections as had previously
reached England; writing his book of travels up the Amazon and Rio Negro
(published in the autumn of 1853), and a little book on the palm trees
based on a number of fine pencil sketches he had preserved in a tin box,
the only thing saved from the wreck.

In summing up the most vivid impressions left on his mind, apart from
purely scientific results, after his four years in South America, he
wrote that the feature which he could never think of without delight was
"the wonderful variety and exquisite beauty of the butterflies and birds
... ever new and beautiful, strange and even mysterious," so that he
could "hardly recall them without a thrill of admiration and wonder."
But "the most unexpected sensation of surprise and delight was my first
meeting and living with man in a state of nature--with absolute
uncontaminated savages!... and the surprise of it was that I did