BARTRAM'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE 197 



Having discovered Bartram, Professor Chinard shrewdly hints, 

 Chateaubriand had no need to go elsewhere in search of the 

 remote/" Bartram furnished him with ail the elements and the 

 colors he needed in order to paint his backdrop: exotic plants 

 and animals, Indians, landscapes, and the sounds and silences of 

 nature in the desert. 



Specifically, Professor Chinard annotates fifty passages in Les 

 Natchez which derive from Bartram. The Cherokee virgins 

 gathering strawberries and the " well-formed Muscogulge 

 women "; the baskets of " choicest fruit " with which Bartram 

 was treated in an Indian hut; the Indian athletic games and 

 musical instruments; the hibiscus plant, the Oenothera grand'i- 

 flora, the Gordonia lasianthus, the llkium Floridanum, and the 

 Dionea muscipula; the " delicious jelly" made from the roots 

 of the smilax and the cream made from hiccory nuts; the '" new 

 and beautiful species of verbena "; the table " spread under the 

 shadow of Oaks, Palms, and Sweet Bays "; the warrior '" stone- 

 blind by extreme old age"; the music of the nonpareil, the 

 mock bird, the " brilliant humming bird," the blue linnet, the 

 golden icterus, and the whip-poor-will ; the cooings of the dove 

 and "the cheerful converse of the wild turkey-cocks"; the 

 flight of the savanna crane; the water-hen, the pelican, and the 

 rice bird; the Indian high priest; the Indian burying ground; 

 the dress of the Cherokees, Muscogulges, Seminoles, Chicasaws, 

 and Chactaws; the funeral dirge of the sachems; the singing 

 and dancing of Indian maidens; the battle of the crocodiles; 

 the roaring of the bull frog; the long black snake, " perfectly 

 inoffensive and free from venom " (" — qui ne fait point de 

 mal ") ; the tropical tempests; Bartram's arrival at the village 

 of Talahasochte ; description of the ephemera — all of these, in 

 one form or another, find a place in Chateaubriand's work. 



One must also add to these specific debts the less tangible 

 one of stylistic influence. In Chateaubriand's descriptions of 

 scenes of unviolated nature a Bartram coloring is at times un- 

 mistakable. The " charm " which the anonymous reviewer of 

 the French translation of Bartram's Travels found in the book 



^° Chateaubriand, Les Natchez, publics avec une Introduction et des Notes 

 par Gilbert Chinard. The Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, p. 61. 



