LIFE AND CHARACTER 33 



Incidentally, his references to food often suggest the gourmet: 



I staid here all night, and had for supper plenty of milk, butter, and 

 very good cheese of their own make, which is a novelty in the maritime 

 parts of Carolina and Georgia (p. 19) . 



. . . having in the course of the day, procured plenty of sea fowl, such 

 as curlews, willets, snipes, sand birds and others ; we had them dressed 

 for supper, and seasoned with excellent oysters, which lay in heaps in 

 the water, close to our landing place (p. 70) . 



. . . the bream my favorite fish (p. 228). 



. . . they [squabs] were almost a lump of fat, and made us a rich 

 supper ; some we roasted, and made others into a pilloe ^°'^ with rice ; 

 most of them, except the bitterns and tantali, were so excessively fishy in 

 taste and smell, I could not rehsh them (p. 249) . 



An interesting document, a piece of unconscious self-charac- 

 terization by Bartram, has been preserved in the diary of one of 

 his nephews, Dr. James Bartram. It is a letter dated September 

 23, 1804, and addressed to his nephew who was about to sail 

 for Batavia as Surgeon on the ship " George Washington." ^°^ 

 The advice offered his nephew discloses the simple tenets of 

 Bartram' s philosophy of life, which may be summarized as an 

 insistence on reverence, tolerance, temperance, honesty, liber- 

 ality, gallantry, and urbanity. In addition to prescribing a gen- 

 eral code of conduct, Bartram also "presumes" to instruct his 

 nephew on some specific points, such as what to do with his 

 leisure, how to safeguard his health, and what to eat and drink 

 in the tropics. It is characteristic of Bartram to suggest that the 

 young man devote his leisure to " philosophic observations, and 

 study; particularly physick and surgery." For "amusement, 

 and profitable exercise to the mind" he recommends observa- 

 tion and study of natural history, " which comprehends Zoology 

 and Botany, not only the product of seas but of land when thee 



^''■' A variant of prlau. " An Oriental dish, consisting of rice boiled with fowl, 



meat, or fish, and spices, raisins, etc. — Appears in English in many forms, 



according to the language or locality whence the writer has adopted it . . . 1612 



Trap. Four Englishm. 55 The most common dish (amongst the Turks) is Pilaw 



made of Rice and small morsels of Mutton boiled . . ." (N. E. D.). 



^"^ This letter has been copied from Dr. James Bartram's diary by Mr. Henry 

 L. Tones of New York, a great-grandson of Dr. Bartram, and is used in this 

 study through his courtesy. See appendix. 



