According to his autobiography, it was while he was in bed with a fever that Wallace thought about Malthus's idea of positive checks on human population and had the idea of natural selection. His autobiography says that he was on the island of Ternate at the time; but historians have said that based on his journal he was on the island of Gilolo. From 1858 to 1861, he rented a house on Ternate from the Dutchman Maarten Dirk van Renesse van Duivenbode, which he used as a base for expeditions to other islands such as Gilolo.