Alfred Russell Wallace > Quotes

“FEW PLACES ARE MORE INTERESTING to a traveller from Europe than the town and island of Singapore, furnishing, as it does, examples of a variety of Eastern races, and of many different religions and modes of life. The government, the garrison, and the chief merchants are English; but the great mass of the population is Chinese, including some of the wealthiest merchants, the agriculturists of the interior, and most of the mechanics and labourers. The native Malays are usually fishermen and boatmen, and they form the main body of the police. The Portuguese of Malacca supply a large number of the clerks and smaller merchants. The Klings of Western India are a numerous body of Muslims, and, with many Arabs, are petty merchants and shopkeepers. The grooms and washermen are all Bengalis, and there is a small but highly respectable class of Parsee merchants. Besides these, there are numbers of Javanese sailors and domestic servants, as well as traders from Sulawesi, Bali, and many other islands of the archipelago.”
― Alfred Russell Wallace, The Malay Archipelago

“And if we continue to devote our chief energies to the utilizing of our knowledge of the laws of nature with the view of still further extending our commerce and our wealth, the evils which necessarily accompany these when too eagerly pursued, may increase to such gigantic dimensions as to be beyond our power to alleviate.”
― Alfred Russell Wallace, The Malay Archipelago