LIFE AND CHARACTER 11 



his father had died some three months before, on September 22, 

 1777. During his five years of wandering he had written home 

 but seldom, " even when there was a chance of sending letters, 

 and his friends " had given " him up for lost among the hostile 

 Indians." " The garden was inherited by William's brother 

 John, also a botanist, who took William into partnership. Wil- 

 liam settled down and led a simple, quiet life, occupied with his 

 scientific observations, his diary, and his correspondence. In 

 1782 he was offered the chair in botany at the University of 

 Pennsylvania, but he declined on account of ill-health. In 1786 

 he became a member of the American Philosophical Society. 

 The Proceedings of that organization report, under date of July 

 20, 1792, the receipt of a copy of " William Bartram's Travels 

 in Georgia." ^® Under date of November 18, 1802, the Proceed- 

 ings record: " First attempt to describe our native vines, by 

 William Bartram." ^^ In 1806 he was invited to accompany 

 Alexander Wilson on an ornithological expedition down the 

 Ohio, " from Pittsburg to the Mississippi, thence to New 

 Orleans," which again he had to decline on account of ill-health.*° 

 Wilson, writing to President Jefferson, on February 6, 1806, 

 expressed his disappointment that Bartram could not accompany 

 him and thus forced him to abandon his plan. " But my vener- 

 able friend, Mr. Bartram," he states, " taking into more serious 

 consideration his advanced age, being near seventy, and the 

 weakness of his eyesight; and apprehensive of his inability to 

 encounter the fatigues and privations unavoidable in so extensive 

 a tour; having, to my extreme regret and the real loss of science, 

 been induced to decline the journey; I . . . reluctantly aban- 

 doned the enterprise . . . " ^^ 



There were other alluring offers. The greatest, which came a 

 few years before Alexander Wilson's proposal, seems, for some 

 reason, to have escaped Bartram's previous biographers. It is the 



^' Fox, op. cit., p. 187. 



** Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 22", 206. 

 ^"Ibid., 22% 328. 



*° William B. O. Peabody, Life of Alexander Wilson. The Library of Ameri- 

 can Biography, conducted by Jared Sparks. New York, 1848. II, 104. 

 " Ibid., p. 105. 



