gelolo The island of Halmahera or
Gilolo. moluq The Moluccas islands, modern day Maluku Islands.
Wallace in the Islands of Ceram, Celebes, Temate, and
Gilolo. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology 6: 36-48.
These references do agree in locating the Alfuros in Celebes (modern Sulawesi) and the Moluccas, on the authority of Alfred Russel Wallace, who visited the former Spice Islands in 1858 and described the "'Alfuros' as they are here called" as the "true indigenes" of the Moluccan island of
Gilolo, now called Halmahera, and as "the predominant type" on the island of Ceram (Malay 321, 370; see Fig.
The other center consists of part of New Guinea that formed part of the ancient Papualand, from where they spread northwards by way of
Gilolo, Molluccas and Celebes, towards the Philippines and eastern Australia and to Polynesia.
For the final leg, from the equatorial island of
Gilolo to Hirado, Saris selected a route skirting the eastern islands of the Philippines.
The clove-producing islands of Ternate, Tidore, Moti(r), Makian and Bac(h)an, where the Portuguese were based, are all very small and all, but Bac(h)an, lie north of the Equator near the island of Halmahera, sometimes referred to as
Gilolo. The mapmaker may have been deliberately vague about this part of the world, not wishing to offend either the King of Portugal or the sister of the King of Spain, by placing the islands on one side or the other.