32 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



with common sense; his unworidliness was balanced by a native 

 shrewdness and ability. 



In connection with the practical equipment of Bartram, it is 

 necessary to remember his mechanical skill and his ability to 

 draw and paint. His drawings, we have noted, attracted the 

 attention of his father's friends and patrons in England. Dr. 

 Lionel Chalmers of Charleston, South Carolina, wrote to John 

 Bartram in April, 1773, that " Billy" Bartram "certainly has a 

 good notion of painting." ^°^ A final tribute to his artistic ability 

 is found in the fact that "most of the plates in Barton's Elements 

 of Botany (1803) were engraved from drawings by Bartram." ^°^ 



To these practical details should also be added his ability in 

 swimming, fishing, shooting, horsemanship, and cooking. " I 

 being a pretty good swimmer," he remarks casually, apropos 

 of an incident in which he helped to save a pack of horses from 

 drowning, " in the midst of the bustle, and to avoid being beat 

 over and perhaps wounded, leapt out, and caught hold of the 

 dock of one of the horses" {Travels, 305). And again, mod- 

 estly, " I plunged in ... , and being a tolerable swimmer, soon 

 reached the opposite shore" (p. 445). He is equally matter of 

 fact in informing us that he took his bob and "soon caught more 

 trout than" he needed for his supper, although he fished in a 

 lagoon the entrance to which was guarded by alligators and 

 once, to save himself, he had to jump from his canoe onto the 

 shore (pp. 117-8-9-20). He tells us that he "dispatched" a 

 temerarious alligator " by lodging the contents of my gun in 

 his head" (p. 121). As a rider, "a good spirited horse under 

 me, I generally kept a-head of my companions ..." (p. 218). 

 He was a good enough cook 



... to roast some trout which I had caught . . . ; their heads I stewed 

 in the juice of oranges, which, with boiled rice, afforded me a whole- 

 some and delicious supper (p. 158). 



^"^ The Simon Gratz Collection. Manuscript Division, Pennsylvania Historical 

 Society, Philadelphia. 



^'"^ Dictionary of American Biography, II, 28 (Lane Cooper). Copies of some 

 of Bartram's paintings and photographs of his drawings are preserved in the 

 permanent exhibit in the natural history museum of the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Natural Sciences. 



