George Windsor Earl the Physical Geography of South-Eastern Asia and Australia", published in 1845, described how shallow seas connected islands on the west (Sumatra, Java, etc.) with the Asian continent and with similar wildlife, and islands on the east such as New Guinea were connected to Australia and were characterised by the presence of marsupials. This formed the insipiration for Alfred Russel Wallace to propose the faunal boundary line now known as the Wallace Line. He published a paper in 1850 that invented the term 'Indu-nesians', for a quaint racial classification, derived from the Latin for India and island. He published a seminal
Wallace, Idaho the Montana state line. East of Wallace, the "Route of the Hiawatha" (rails-to-trails) and the Lookout Pass ski area are popular with locals and tourists. Wallace came into being on a river plain where four streams and five canyons converge onto the course of the South Fork. The earliest known white interest in the area was the construction of the Mullan Road, which followed the South Fork from near Cataldo almost to the pass that crossed into Montana. John Mullan did observe promising quartz outcroppings along their route when he passed through in late 1859. However, he later frankly stated