182 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



Later in the same poem he writes: 



He had no friend on earth, save one blue jay, 

 Which, from the Mississippi, far away, 

 O'er the Atlantic, to his native land 

 He brought . . . (424-427) 



and adds in a footnote, " The blue jay of the Mississippi. See 

 Chateaubriand's Indian song in ' Atala.' " ^* The particular pas- 

 sage in the Indian song referred to is 



If the blue jay of the Meschaceba (Mississippi) should say to the 

 nonpareil of Florida, ' Why do you mourn so bitterly ? Have you not 

 here pleasant waters and delightful shades, and all kinds of food, as 

 well as in your own forests?' 'Yes,' the fugitive nonpareil would 

 answer; ' but my nest is in the jessamine; who will bring that to me? 

 and have you the sun of my savanna? ' ^^ 



That Chateaubriand owed both his blue jay of this Mississippi 

 and his nonpareil of Florida to Bartram will be shown in a 

 little while. Here, it need be pointed out, Bowles shows an 

 influence of Bartram; in one instance he went directly to the 

 Travels, in another he went to Chateaubriand, but the images 

 in both cases came out of Bartram. 



It is not possible to trace Bowles's indebtedness to Bartram in 

 other poems with as much certainty as in " Banwell Hill." Yet 

 his " Song of the American Indian," with its " hills sublime," 

 its " winding river," its " gladsome toil " of the Indians, its alli- 

 gator and tiger and " beauteous cardinal," its '" hoary oaks " and 

 " craggy banks — O'erhung with stately cypress-ranks," and its 

 " trim canoe " — has all the marks of Bartram. So has his " The 

 Missionary," so full of Indian lore and American landscape, 

 obviously adapted from various travel books. 



Thomas Campbell: 



While Gertrude of Wyoming is located in Pennsylvania, 

 Campbell's landscape is far from being Pennsylvanian. In spite 

 of the fact that his father had spent many years in Virginia,^' 



" Ibid., II, 57. 



^^ Atala by F. A. Chateaubriand. Translated (1802) from the French by 

 Caleb Bingham. Stanford University Press reprint, edited by William Leonard 

 Schwartz, 1930, p. 47. " D. N. B., VIII, 393. 



