THE PERILS OF AN EXPLORER 161 



" Flora sported in solitary retirement, as Sylva doth on 

 the Catskill mountains." He explored New River, and 

 passed through the Carolinas to the Congaree. Again 

 he roamed to the north through the rich scenery of New 

 York province, going up the Hudson River to Albany, 

 and climbing the Catskills, where he found the balm of 

 Gilead fir and the paper birch. It was on his journey in 

 1743, with an interpreter, to the land of the Five Nations, 

 the vale of Onandago, and the great Lake Frontenac 

 (Ontario), that he found the large magnolia (acuminata) 

 growing 100 feet high ; Collinson received the seed from 

 him, and writes twenty years later : " I am in high 

 delight, my two mountain magnolias are pyramids of 

 flowers." Another journey west was through the wilder- 

 ness to Pittsburg, whence he travelled for six days down 

 the Ohio River, lying at night in the woods upon the 

 bank. He was in peril from the Indians ; once he had 

 his hat pulled off, and the Indian " chewed it all around, 

 to show me," he writes, " how he would eat me if I came 

 again." When these tribes joined the French against 

 the colonists, Bartram's travels were hindered for some 

 years. Collinson and he disagreed upon the topic of the 

 red men. Bartram, his ears tingling with tales of 

 massacre, said : We must bang them, drive them back. 

 His friend defended them, showing how they had been 

 defrauded and injured, and referred to two papers he had 

 written in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1763 on a Plan for 

 a Lasting Peace with the Indians. At length, when he 

 was sixty-six years of age, Bartram was able to go south 

 with his son William into Georgia, passing on into Florida 

 to the (lately Spanish) town of St. Augustine, ascending 

 the St. John's River to its source, and visiting the lakes. 

 He attended a congress at Picolata between the governor 

 and the Indians, but fever and jaundice troubled him on 

 the journey. 



Every year Bartram put on board of the ships that 

 sailed from Philadelphia for England bales and boxes, 

 sometimes over a score in number, containing his collec- 

 tions ; and his English friend soon set up a system of 



M 



