s shaped irrevocably in the events that took place during those momentous five years of his life. His passion for natural history was not stifled, but allowed to bloom; his zeal sharpened his eyes and ears, and opend up his mind to "new ideas, new books, new friends, new observations, new hypotheses, new laws" (Dorsey 79). His spirit of adventure led him to far-off lands where obscure fauna and flora were living and breathing, and not just names in some book. "The discipline of the trip taught him an eternal lesson in good-humoured patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself and making the best of every occurrence" (Dorsey 71). While he eventually found himself to be at odds with the religion that he once wholeheartedly embraced, never did he attempt to derogate people's beliefs; it was with rare and noble calmness with which he expound[ed] his own views, undisturbed by the heats of polemical agitation which those views...excited, and persistently refus[ed] to retort on his antagonists by ridicule, by indignation, or by contempt. (Dorsey 270) So it was through hard work, flexibility and openmindedness that this great man, whom his colleague and friend Wallace termed "the Newton of Natural History" (West 325), came to develop his trademark values of integrity and dedication as he sailed the shores of distant lands....
