So exciting... Tidore's Mount Api Kiematabu from Kota Baru harbor, Ternate, Indonesia
So exciting to have arrived here on Ternate in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. This is where the footsteps are of two of my naturalist and botanical heroes.
Georgius Everhardus Rumphius (1627-1702), a merchant turned naturalist in the service of the Dutch East Indies Trading Company (VOC), lived and worked on Ambon, another of the Maluku Islands. As a merchant as well as a botanist he had an eye and taste, too, for the cloves of Ternate. Those cloves made a fortune for the VOC, which exported them to Europe. The biography of Rumphius is amazing... Now and then in past photo descriptions I've given bits and pieces of it.
The other is the excentric naturalist and collector Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). It was in a letter from Ternate - but possibly he wrote it on Halmahera - to Charles Darwin that Wallace described his own theory of natural selection. Scholars today can still get hot under the collar debating who was the 'True Originator' of Darwin's useful theory. Wallace lived for a time on Ternate. There's some discussion where exactly, and I hope to learn more about that tomorrow.
The view this late afternoon of Tidore from Kota Baru, Ternate, was brilliant and blue and wonderful. But it'd been a long day, and I hurried back to my hotel...
PS My internet connection here is less than optimal, so I may not be able to comment or react as quickly as usually. Please bear with me this week... Thanks.
So exciting... Tidore's Mount Api Kiematabu from Kota Baru harbor, Ternate, Indonesia
So exciting to have arrived here on Ternate in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. This is where the footsteps are of two of my naturalist and botanical heroes.
Georgius Everhardus Rumphius (1627-1702), a merchant turned naturalist in the service of the Dutch East Indies Trading Company (VOC), lived and worked on Ambon, another of the Maluku Islands. As a merchant as well as a botanist he had an eye and taste, too, for the cloves of Ternate. Those cloves made a fortune for the VOC, which exported them to Europe. The biography of Rumphius is amazing... Now and then in past photo descriptions I've given bits and pieces of it.
The other is the excentric naturalist and collector Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). It was in a letter from Ternate - but possibly he wrote it on Halmahera - to Charles Darwin that Wallace described his own theory of natural selection. Scholars today can still get hot under the collar debating who was the 'True Originator' of Darwin's useful theory. Wallace lived for a time on Ternate. There's some discussion where exactly, and I hope to learn more about that tomorrow.
The view this late afternoon of Tidore from Kota Baru, Ternate, was brilliant and blue and wonderful. But it'd been a long day, and I hurried back to my hotel...
PS My internet connection here is less than optimal, so I may not be able to comment or react as quickly as usually. Please bear with me this week... Thanks.