120 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



miles from any house or plantation, and had reason to apprehend this 

 to be a predatory band of Negroes: people being frequently attacked, 

 robbed, and sometimes murdered by them at this place; I was unarmed, 

 alone, and my horse tired; thus situated every way in their power, I 

 had no alternative but to be resigned and prepare to meet them, as soon 

 as I saw them distinctly a mile or two off, I immediately alighted to 

 rest, and give breath to my horse, intending to attempt my safety by 

 flight, if upon near approach they should betray hostile designs, thus 

 prepared, when we drew near to each other, I mounted and rode briskly 

 up; and though armed with clubs, axes and hoes, they opened to right 

 and left, and let me pass peaceably . . . (pp. 471-72). 



The same ability to portray a situation full of suspense is 

 discernible in Bartram's encounters with animals. The element 

 of conflict, so essential in any narrative, is never absent from his 

 descriptions of these adventurous incidents. His fight with the 

 alligators, a part of his hook which has proved most memorable, 

 is actually thrilling. First he describes a battle among the 

 alligators themselves, which he has witnessed, a sort of prel- 

 ude which causes his " apprehensions " to become " highly 

 alarmed." To add to the atmosphere of danger, he sets down, 

 with truly Poesque sensitiveness to the shadings of a situation, 

 that "" the sun was near setting." Then the battle begins. His 

 canoe is " attacked on all sides " and his phght becomes "" pre- 

 carious to the last degree." The realism of the struggle is most 

 meticulous and highly effective. His diction becomes precise 

 and dramatic. Nouns become concrete and specific; verbs spring 

 alive with action. " Two very large ones attacked me closely, 

 at the same instant, rushing up with their heads and part of 

 their bodies above the water, roaring terribly and belching floods 

 of water over me. They struck their jaws together so close to 

 my ears, as almost to stun me, and I expected every moment to 

 be dragged out of the boat and instantly devoured " (pp. 

 118-19). 



Equally thrilling are other scenes, in which Bartram himself 

 was not an antagonist, often not even a participant, but merely 

 a spectator. Such are the numerous hunting episodes or battles 

 between animals which he describes. These are seldom purely 

 objective descriptions but are colored either by pity or by a sense 

 of the dramatic. There is the account, in the Introduction, of 

 the killing of a mother bear and her cub, which " fell to weep- 



