PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 55 



Glycine frutescens, disclosing their beauties to the fluttering breeze, and 

 bathing their limbs in the cool fleeting streams; whilst other parties, 

 more gay and libertine, were yet collecting strawberries, or wantonly 

 chasing their companions, tantalising them, staining their lips and 

 cheeks with the rich fruit. 



The sylvan scene of primitive innocence was enchanting . . . (pp. 



Enchanting, however, as these idyllic pictures of Utopian 

 Elysiums are, whose fascination captured the imaginations of 

 the English Romantic poets, there is another side to Bartram, 

 a side which is just as important in a proper understanding and 

 evaluation of his work. It is his practical knowledge of the pro- 

 ducts and uses of landscape, paralleling, as it were, his scientific 

 curiosity and observation. When he is not a poet carried away 

 by the glorious aspects of nature he is not a primitivist, but a 

 shrewd realist living in an enterprising age and having a utili- 

 tarian perspective. One illustration will suffice: 



This vast plain together with the forests contiguous to it, if per- 

 mitted (by the Siminoles who are sovereigns of these realms) to be in 

 possession and under the culture of industrious planters and mechanics, 

 would in a little time exhibit other scenes than it does at present, 

 delightful as it is; for by the arts of agriculture and commerce, almost 

 every desirable thing in life might be produced and made plentiful here, 

 and thereby establish a rich, populous, and delightful region; as this 

 soil and climate appears to be of a nature favourable for the production 

 of almost all the fruits of the earth, as Corn, Rice, Indigo, Sugar-cane, 

 Flax, Cotton, Silk, Cochineal, and all the varieties of esculent vegetables ; 

 and I suppose no part of the earth affords such endless range and 

 exuberant pasture for cattle, deer, sheep, &c. the waters every where, 

 even in the holes in the earth abound with varieties of excellent fish; 

 and the forests and native meadows with wild game, as bear, deer, 

 turkeys, quail, and in the winter season geese, ducks and other fowl; 

 and lying contiguous to one of the most beautiful navigable rivers in 

 the world and not more than thirty miles from St. Mark's on the 

 great bay of Mexico; is most conveniently situated for the West-India 

 trade, and the commerce of all the world (pp. 234-35). 



This side of Bartram includes a study of the Indian not merely 

 as an item in landscape but as a group of ethnological entities, 

 having specific manners and customs and psychological reac- 

 tions to the business of living. The contribution of Bartram in 

 this field merits more detailed attention. 



