160 PETER COLLINSON AND JOHN BARTRAM CH. 



minds, both eager in the pursuit of natural objects, 

 seizing with a boyish delight on every new tree or flower, 

 looking for birds, fishes, turtles, butterflies, and reasoning 

 on all things upon the earth and beneath it. Nor was it 

 novelty and utility alone, but the beauty of these objects 

 which roused their ardour, and stirred up in each of them 

 a simple and childlike reverence for the Creator. A touch 

 of affection united " dear Peter " and " my dear John," 

 and if each could sometimes strike a querulous note, it 

 was interspersed with humour and kindliness. 



Bartram was a born naturalist ; his eye seemed never 

 to miss a fresh object, and nothing escaped his memory. 

 He was a hardy son of the soil, and spared himself no toil 

 nor labour if he could discover some new plant. Collinson 

 on his part was no less eager, and was constantly stirring 

 up his friend to send him seeds, sods, roots, cuttings or 

 pictures of all that he found. Thus encouraged, Bartram 

 carried out at intervals an indefatigable search of the 

 American backwoods. Sometimes he had to cross 

 unbridged rivers, to pry among the rattlesnakes, or was 

 obliged to follow the tracks of wild beasts through dense 

 thickets. At others he traversed places most desolate 

 and craggy, where no mortal had ever trod. A fall from 

 a tree once left him helpless on the ground, a day's 

 journey from the nearest settlement. To obtain the 

 cones of rare pines at the proper season for his insatiable 

 friend, he had, he tells him, " a grievous bad time " ; 

 climbing trees in the rain to lop the boughs, and then 

 standing up to his knees in the snow to pluck off the 

 cones. 



He travelled through most of the provinces from Nova 

 Scotia to Florida, and from the sea to the great lakes and 

 the Ohio. Many times he went westward through 

 Maryland and Virginia, searched the head-waters of the 

 Rappahannock, and the course of James River, and the 

 forests where grew the arbor vitae and the glorious 

 rhododendron. " The spacious vale of 600 miles in 

 length," that runs south-west between the Blue Ridge 

 and the Alleghanies, was his chief hunting-ground. Here 



