By Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight, the confining walls of the school had become intolerable to Wallace, and he started away on a wild-goose chase to Brazil, with a chum by the name of Henry Walter Bates, an ardent entomologist. Alfred had no money either, but Bates had influence, and he cashed it in by arranging with the Curator of the British Museum, that any natural-history specimens of value which they might gather and send to him would be paid for. And so something like a hundred pounds was collected from several scientific men, and handed over as advance payment for the wonderful things that the young men were to send back. They embarked on a sailing-vessel that was captained by a kind kinsman of Bates, so the fare was nil, in consideration of services rendered constructively. Arriving in Brazil the young men began their collecting of specimens. They got together a very creditable collection of birds' eggs and sent them back by the captain of the ship they came out on, this as an earnest of what was to come. Bates and Wallace were together for a year. Bates insisted on remaining near the white settlements; but Wallace wanted to go where white men had never been. So alone he went into the forests, and for two years lived with the natives and dared the dangers of jungle-fever, snakes, crocodiles and savages. For a space of ten months he did not see a single white person. He collected nearly ten thousand specimens of birds, which he skinned and carefully prepared so they could be mounted when he returned to England; there was also a nearly complete Brazilian herbarium, and a finer collection of birds' eggs than any museum of England could boast. This collection represented over three years' continuous toil. All the curious things were packed with great care and placed on board ship. And so the young naturalist sailed away for England, proud and happy, with his great collection of entomological, botanical and ornithological specimens. But on the way the ship took fire, and the collection was either burned or ruined by soaking salt water. That the crew and their sole passenger escaped alive was a wonder. Wallace on reaching England was in a sorry plight, being destitute of clothes and funds. And there were unkind ones who did not hesitate to hint that he had only been over to Ireland working in a peat-bog, and that his knowledge of Brazil was gotten out of Humboldt's books. In one way, Wallace surely paralleled Humboldt: both lost a most valuable collection of natural-history specimens by shipwreck. Several of the good men who had advanced money now asked that it be paid. Wallace set to work writing out his recollections, the only asset that he possessed.