THE ART OF BARTRAM 123 



hugely enjoyed what he saw, and had the ability to dramatize 

 it in words. One wonders what Bartram would have done with 

 the Natural Bridge in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson spent a page 

 and a half in his Notes and succeeded in conveying merely a 

 few expository details. He talked about the fissure being 270 

 feet deep, 45 feet wide, 90 feet at the top; he talked about his 

 looking down from the top and getting a violent headache ; and 

 when he became emotional he gave up describing altogether, 

 exclaiming that " the rapture of the spectator is really indescrib- 

 able." ^^ The magnificence, the colors, the lights and shades, 

 that Bartram would have seen and painted for us ! 



Bartram captured not only the aesthetic surfaces of nature, 

 but the spirit of distance, solitude, and the unknown. Into the 

 romantic remote he traveled and his days and nights pass before 

 our eyes, the succession of morning, noon, and night, of sun- 

 rise and sunset and moonlight; we meet strange objects of 

 nature, people, silence and solitude and song, and sunrise again, 

 " the roseate morn." 



Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, pp. 34-35. 



