72 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



stitute the realization of an Arcadian dream. Even in the more 

 temperate region which Bartram explored, he found that in the 

 summer season '" the air at mid-day . . . was insufferably hot 

 and sultry" {Travels, 35). Aldous Huxley may be too posi- 

 tive in his assertion that a " voyage through the tropics would 

 have cured " Wordsworth "' of his too easy and comfortable 

 pantheism," * but he is right in emphasizing the relationship 

 between climate and nature description. In Bartram' s case, this 

 relationship is important enough for us to attempt to determine 

 just where he traveled, under what circumstances, and what 

 places he describes. 



The map which accompanies the Travels is of little use, since 

 it covers but a small part of Bartram' s route, the eastern coast 

 of Florida, from the St. Johns River down to Cape Canaveral. 

 But throughout his narrative he is specific enough to enable us 

 to work out his itinerary, with a few difficulties arising from 

 changes, with the years, of names of places mentioned. The 

 book is divided into four Parts, of which only the first three 

 tell a connected story of his travels; Part IV is an account of 

 the different tribes of Indians he met, has a separate title page, 

 and is really a sort of appendix. The total time consumed by 

 his travels was four years and nine months: he left Philadelphia 

 " in April, 1773 " {Travels, p. 1), and returned to his father's 

 house "on the banks of the river Schuylkill, within four miles 

 of the city [Philadelphia], January 1778 " (p. 480). 



He sailed from Philadelphia by packet for Charleston, S. C. 

 The first 150 miles, down the Delaware to Cape Henlopen, were 

 a " pleasant run." Then he met with a sea storm, a phenom- 

 enon he loved to describe. His boat got into Charleston on the 

 eleventh day after it left Cape Henlopen. From Charleston he 

 sailed by coasting vessel for Savannah, from which port he set 

 off by horse on one of his numerous little exploration trips. He 

 went south to " the rising city of Sunbury " and to Fort Barring- 

 ton on the " Alatamaha " River, passing, he tells us, through a 

 level country, well watered by large streams . . . coursing from 

 extensive swamps and marshes . . ." (p. 10) . Next he went 

 to "Darian," and on the way stopped at the plantation of a 



*" Wordsworth in the Tropics." Life and Letters, I, 354. 



