108 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



description, there is apparent his knowledge of perspective in 

 the finishing touches of this scene: " You imagine the picture 

 to be within a few inches of your eyes, and that you may with- 

 out the least difficulty touch any one of the fish, or put your 

 fingers upon the crocodile's eye, when it really is twenty or 

 thirty feet under water " (p. 167) . 



Even more definite is his knowledge of painting and his use 

 of painter's terms as disclosed by his writings on the Indians. 

 An answer to one of the Queries about Indians contains the 

 following remarks: 



Like Egyptian mystical hieroglyphics — extremely caricature & pictur- 

 esque. No chiaro scuro, yet bold outlines, natural. Most beautiful 

 painting on bodies.® 



A fuller answer to this or a similar query appears in the Observ- 

 ations, in which, among other things, he says: 



I am sensible that these specimens of their paintings will, to us, 

 who have made such incomparable progress and refinement in the arts 

 and sciences, appear trifling and ludicrous. . . . Most beautiful painting 

 now to be found among the Muscogulges is on the bodies of their 

 ancient chiefs or micos, breast, trunk, arms, thighs. . . . Commonly 

 the sun, moon, and planets occupy the breast ; zones or belts, or beautiful 

 fanciful scrolls, wind round the trunk of the body, thighs, arms, and 

 legs, dividing the body into many fields or tablets, which are orna- 

 mented or filled up with innumerable figures, as representations of 

 animals of the chase, — a sketch of a landscape. . . . These paintings 

 are admirably well executed and seem like mezzotinto. . . .^° 



To these comments must be added a passage from the Travels: 



The pillars and walls of the houses of the square are decorated with 

 various paintings and sculptures; which I suppose to be hieroglyphic, 

 and as an historic legendary of political and sacerdotal affairs: but they 

 are extremely picturesque or caricature, as men in variety of attitudes, 

 some ludicrous enough, others having the head of some kind of animal, 

 as those of a duck, turkey, bear, fox, wolf, buck, &c. and again those 

 kind of creatures are represented having the human head. These designs 

 were not ill executed; the outlines bold, free, and well proportioned 

 g: ravels, 455). 



• Answer to Question 7 in John Howard Payne's Commonplace Book. 

 ^^ Transactions of the Am. Ethnological Society, III, Part I, 18-19. 



