Describing a journey among the Spice Islands of Indonesia aboard a traditional native sailing vessel, this is also an account of a quest to rediscover a remarkable Englishman, who changed the way we see the natural world. Alfred Russel Wallace was a joint-author of the theory of evolution by natural selection, yet today his name is overshadowed by Darwin's. A brilliant and intrepid naturalist, Wallace was the author of The Malay Archipelago, one of the greatest of all travel books. It was used as a guide in 1996 when Tim Severin retraced his path through the Spice Islands, encountering red birds of paradise, sea turtles and other unusual flora and fauna, and observing rainforest destruction, the smuggling of rare species, and ancient systems of tribal rule.