Two Bartram Themes: Nature and Civilization

Bartram’s style and its fidelity to Truth accounts for two important themes in the Travels, Nature and its corollary, Civilization. A strong debate over these two forces had emerged in the late 18th century, as Clarence J. Glacken has noted. During the late Renaissance, Europeans began to think they knew the limitations of their natural environment and, therefore, curbed their expectations for social progress. But the discovery of America opened a Pandora’s box, and the accounts travelers sent back to Europe during the next two centuries depicted not only a New World, but an image of the entire world seen anew.(145) Europeans thus had to recognize that their idea of civilization could no longer be limited by the single environment they had occupied and understood.

In the Travels, Bartram paints a brilliant image of Nature in the New World, reveling in its immensity and splendid profusion; but he also suggests that the orderly and rhythmical qualities of this Nature contain the same principles of balance which he admires in civilization. For this reason he does not fear or decry the coming of civilization to the wilderness, but rather greets it with cheerful anticipation. In this respect, he is very much a child of the 18th century, which stressed the advantages of civilized development and progress.

Benign Nature

Bartram’s image of Nature in the Travels is almost incessantly positive. He sees Nature as a mirror of the mind of God, which reflects His plan of creation. The subtitle of the Travels describes an orderly hierarchy in Nature, in the arrangement of three broad subjects: the soil, natural productions, and the Indians of the American South.(146) This grouping suggests the Great Chain of Being, rising upward from the earth’s interior to the creatures that freely traverse its surface. His Introduction also posits a faith in natural hierarchy, using images of civilized artifacts to make the point: “This world, as a glorious apartment of the boundless palace of the sovereign Creator, is furnished with an infinite variety of animated scenes, inexpressibly beautiful and pleasing, equally free to the inspection and enjoyment of all his creatures.”(147) For Bartram, the earth is a coherent structure, all of its parts related to each other, from smallest to largest, in a system that modern observers might call “ecological.” In his view, even geographical forms are harmonious symmetrical structures:

The rivers moving through this land are also emblems of natural form, growing from small streams to merge with larger tributaries. This structural metaphor, suggesting both order and progress, appears in many narratives of the Romantic era, including Wordsworth’s River Duddon and Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Bartram anticipates those later patterns at one climactic moment, when he stands atop Mount Magnolia, highest ridge of the Cherokee Mountains, and envisions all rivers running west to an ultimate confluence, merging at last with “the sovereign Mississippi.”(149) The beautiful economy of earth’s forms teaches him to seek similar convergences, for in them lies the shape of the Creator’s power. Bartram, therefore, sees Nature as a Process, not merely as a created product, and that view accounts for his persistent benevolence in observing Nature. Admittedly, he is known “to be an advocator or vindicator of the benevolent or peaceful disposition of animal creation”(150) and this childlike innocence makes him extraordinarily tolerant of events that other travelers might have found violent and depressing.

For Bartram, Nature is unceasingly benign. In the plants, which he believes have both mechanical and intellectual powers,(151) he sees God working in a kindly fashion. Birds also seem to him “social and benevolent creatures” because they form communities,(152) communicate with one another, and follow rhythmical cycles-hence he insists on our understanding their annual migrations. Celestial bodies, especially the sun, also move in chronic rhythms, whether in eclipse(153) or in daily rising and falling; their stately motion suggests a model for “the rule and government of this earth.”(l54) Bartram is thus not alarmed to find that in Nature life and death alternately rise and fall; these cycles reassure him of an ordained balance in Creation. The life cycle of a tree, which decays and “is again reduced to its original earth, and replaces the vegetative mould”(155) is a symbol of the beauty and necessity of death, for only through death may life continue, resurrected. This notion clearly derives from Bartram’s religious background, but it does not work in his story simply as a moral parable; to him that life/death cycle is real and undeniable; its actuality is an essential part of its Truth.

As a consequence, Bartram’s descriptions are persistently optimistic and serene; he often describes vistas as “prospects,” a term suggesting pleasurable anticipation of a future yet unrevealed. At one important prospect, the Great Sink in Florida, he interprets “this fatal fountain or receptacle” positively, watching the fish descend into the earth, out of sight. He concludes:

This image haunted Coleridge’s mind, becoming at last an important element in his visionary poem, Kubla Khan. For Bartram, the disappearing fish are not a sign of Nature’s malevolence, but of its benevolent process of propagation, in which all apparent destruction is only the obverse side of creation and sustenance. The Sink Hole, an apparent avenue to death, is for him a means by which the earth endlessly distributes living fish to other bodies of water.

Because of his incessant optimism, Bartram rarely sees that Nature has its darker and less pleasant aspects. He seems to experience little discomfort in the wilderness; the night he spent fighting alligators was horror-filled and dangerous, but the next day he found a quiet haven and enjoyed “a blissful tranquil repose.”(157) Like any traveler, he must endure the hazards of weather, but to Bartram these agitations are merely temporary.(158) The hurricane that was so destructive, he sees not as the true face of Nature, but her obverse, unnatural side; for him Nature cannot be chaotic. The vegetable world supports these beliefs rather sturdily. The Palmetto (Yucca) plant, with its bayonet-shaped leaves and sharp terminal needles, might seem threatening on a forest trail, yet Bartram sees only “a very singular and beautiful production.(159) The epiphytic grape vines and Spanish moss that cling to trees look destructive; yet, to him, they are an emblem of support and nurture: “From their bulk and strength, one would imagine they were combined to pull down these mighty trees to the earth; when, in fact, amongst other good purposes, they serve to uphold them,” an observation he supports with several factual details.(160)

Bartram is also a patient apologist for animal behavior that less generous observers would call malevolent. To the good Quaker, a panther that devours calves and young colts is merely “a mischievous animal;”(161) while a “rapacious wolf” that stole his fish is gratefully thanked for not having made a meal of Bartram.(162) This determined optimism at times leads to flat-footed complacency. Seeing that some cattle and horses suffer from water-rot on their legs, he attributes this condition to the animals' greedy desire for water grass, a habit that keeps their legs constantly damp and infected: “A sacrifice to intemperance and luxury.”(163) Interestingly enough, his benevolence noticeably declines as Bartram considers the sub-mammalian orders. The alligator, as we have noted, is a frightfully voracious beast, a cannibal who is horrific in all his aspects.(164) The rattlesnake, which prompts a long digression in the Travels, is not for Bartram an evil figure, as it would be for most Christian writers who saw the serpent as a symbol of Original Sin.(165) Yet, in writing of snakes, Bartram clearly describes a moral crisis, placing his mind “in a tumult, almost equally divided between thanksgiving to the Supreme Creator and Preserver, and the dignified nature of the generous though terrible creature…”(166) Although he often tries to protect the serpents, once he is forced by circumstances to kill a snake-ironically, to prove his worthiness to some Indians.(167) In other episodes, Bartram clearly recognizes that the combative struggle for survival is Nature’s way, yet he refrains from condemning this process, which in Moby Dick Herman Melville later called “the horrible vulturism” of the earth. Viewing a continual war between crayfish and goldfish in a pond, Bartram describes this scene “with high relish,” a pleasing aesthetic spectacle that does not affect his moral conscience.(168) Yet in the lowest of all animal orders, he almost meets his match.

The insect clearly lives beyond all moral codes, concerned only with its survival and utterly lacking in compassion. In his introduction Bartram describes a mortal combat between a spider and a bumble bee, verifying the existence of a food chain; later he almost sees a diabolism in the biting flies that torment travelers, “…almost sinking under the persecutions from the evil spirits, who continually surround and follow us over the burning desart ridges and plans…”(169) These furies are eventually scattered by a hurricane, which in this instance is a welcome alternative provided by Nature.

This beneficent vision of Nature clearly appealed to the Romantic poets, especially Coleridge-the Ancient Mariner earns his salvation by learning to bless the horrifying water snakes-and to Wordsworth and Emerson, whose views of Nature were also positive and optimistic. Bartram’s ideas came from the Quaker reverence for all living things and also from late 18th century aesthetics, as formulated by Edmund Burke’s Enquiry into the Origin on the Sublime and the Beautiful.(170) To Bartram, the sublime aspects of Nature are its grand features: the seascape, which seems an image of the primeval earth, “sublime, awful, and majestic;” the storms and hurricanes that periodically appear; and the glory of mountain scenery: “whence I beheld with rapture and astonishment a sublimely awful scene of power and magnificence, a world of mountains piled upon mountains.”(171) His language and imagery in these descriptions resembles the standard tropes of Enlightenment poetry; yet they also express a genuinely personal acceptance of Divine power, which far exceeds his own. For Bartram, the Sublime describes Nature’s ultimate purpose, an attitude that led him to accept all natural events as working towards some higher goal.(172)

The same assurance characterizes Bartram’s view of civilization, which he sees as a Divinely ordered structure, resembling that of organic life. Therefore he sees no conflict between Nature and civilization; as a civilized man, his mission is to study Nature, recognize its plan, and urge his society to follow the same path

Civilization

While exploring the wilderness, Bartram never lets his readers forget that he is the harbinger of civilization. In the Travels, Bartram alludes most positively to any conditions of settlement, for they depict a harmonious relation of Nature and man People who live in the woods far from towns are “no strangers to sensibility;”(173) they have imported the virtues of society into the woods. Often he sees figures who represent a happy balance of Art and Nature, like the fly fisherman, who adroitly imitates the action of a water-skimming insect to snare his prey;(174) or a remarkable dog that keeps an entire “troop of horse” under its control and care.(175) Nature seems most pleasant to Bartram when touched by man; he notes that birds often dwell close to settlements(176) and that nuts and fruit trees, whatever their original habitat, “thrive better, and are more fruitful, in cultivated plantations.”(177)

Because of his preference for stable conditions, Bartram praises any settlements he encounters, seeing them as opportunities for the development of “virtue and industry.”(178) In the wilderness, his most pleasing “prospect” is some evidence of cultivation, a sign that men are going about their proper work.(179) He often proposes utilitarian schemes for these regions, which grate on the ears of modern readers, for whom the wilderness is a vanishing resource. Some of Bartram’s comments have the effect of ironic prophecy, as when he proposes to convert the interior of Florida, through the arts of agriculture and commerce, into “a rich, populous, and delightful region;”(180) or when he predicts that the area around Cuscowilla could easily provide a home for “one hundred thousand human inhabitants, besides millions of domestic animals,” all imported from over-crowded Europe.(181)

By contrast, whenever he travels in an utterly wild country, the landscape disturbs his imagination, for the absence of man suggests inhumanity and brutality: “…scenes of uncultivated Nature, on reflection, perhaps [are] rather disagreeable to a mind of delicate feelings and sensibility, since some of these objects recognized past transactions and events, perhaps not altogether reconcilable to justice and humanity.”(182) In his moments of isolation Bartram is most fearful and dejected, feeling “unharmonized” with his surroundings and exiled from his native Philadelphia.(183)

One of the worst moments in his travels occurs on the return journey across Alabama, when he fears being abandoned to uncertain treatment by the Creek Indians, who are not peaceable, and perhaps losing all his precious specimens, “…I must not be left alone to perish in the wilderness.”(184) Yet Bartram admired the scenic splendor of wilderness; and, in this sense, he was far ahead of his age’s standards. As Donald Peattie notes, Bartram belonged to a generation of American naturalists who embraced the “thoughtless random abundance” of wilderness, not measuring it with the clinical exactitude, but with larger and more imaginative eyes.(185) Not until Henry Thoreau do we find an American writer as willing as Bartram to praise the beauty of wilderness, or to insist that “in Wilderness is the preservation of the World.”(186)

Footnotes

145. Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought From Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century, Berkley, 1967, pp. 623–693.

146. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., see Bartram title page.

147. Ibid., p. xiv, Harper, p. 1.

148. Ibid., p. 393, Harper, p. 248. It is interesting to note Bartram’s frequent references to art and architecture in describing the wilderness.

149. Ibid., p. 339, Harper, p. 214.

150. Ibid., p. 268, Harper, p. 168.

151. Ibid., pp. xxiv–xxv, Harper, p. Ivi.

152. Ibid., p. xxi, Harper, p. Iix.

153. For Bartram’s account of a lunar eclipse, see Travels, op. cit., p. 51, Harper, p. 33.

154. Ibid., p. 158, Harper, p. 100.

155. Ibid., p. 72, Harper, p. 47.

156. Ibid., p. 206, Harper, p. 131.

157. Ibid., pp. 134–136, Harper, pp. 85–86.

158. Ibid., p. 52, Harper, p. 33.

159. Ibid., p. 71, Harper, p. 46.

160. Ibid., pp. 86–87, Harper, p. 56.

161. Ibid., p. 46, Harper, p. 30.

162. Ibid., p. 159, Harper, p. 101.

163. Ibid., p. 208, Harper, p. 132.

164. Ibid., pp. 119–123, pp. 128–130, Harper, pp. 76–78, pp. 81–83. Bartram was apparently haunted by fear of the alligators for the rest of his life. In his (anonymous) posthumous biography of Bartram, George Ord wrote: “Indeed, so powerful were the impressions left on Mr. Bartram by these unpleasant occurances, that he never could entirely divest himself of them, and years after they had passed, he was heard to say that he was often startled from his sleep by violent and hideous dreams of his encounters with these monsters. ” Ord, “Biographical Sketch of William Bartram,” The Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports, Vol. II, Philadelphia: J. & T. Doughty, 1832.

165. Charlotte Porter has suggested that Bartram’s great praise of the rattlesnake may reflect his nationalism. From the time of the American Revolution, the rattlesnake had symbolized America’s strength. ("Don't Tread On Me” flags were among the new nation’s first. )

166. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., p. 269, Harper, pp. 168–169.

167. Ibid., pp. 261–262, Harper, pp. 164–165.

168. Ibid., p. 43, Harper, p. 28.

169. Ibid., pp. 385–386, Harper, p. 243.

170. Robert W. Bradford, “Journey Into Nature: American Nature Writing, 1733–1760," unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, Syracuse University, 1957, pp. 114–159.

171. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., pp. 2 and 362, Harper, pp. 2 and 229.

172. For background on this idea, see Fagin, William Bartram, Interpreter, op. cit., pp. 13, 20–21, and 127.

173. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., p. 310, Harper, p. 197.

174. Ibid., pp. 108–109, Harper, pp. 69–70.

175. Ibid., pp. 222–223, Harper, pp. 140–141.

176. Ibid., p. 20, Harper, p. 14.

177. Ibid., p. 38, Harper, p. 25.

178. Ibid., p. 60, Harper, p. 39.

179. Ibid., cf. 222, Harper, cf. 140.

180. Ibid., p. 234, Harper, p. 148.

181. Ibid., p. 251, Harper, p. 158.

182. Ibid., p. 322, Harper, p. 204.

183. Ibid., p. 331, Harper, pp. 209–210.

184. Ibid., p. 442, Harper, p. 279.

185. Donald Culross Peattie, Green Laurels: The Lives and Achievements of the Great Naturalists, New York, 1936, pp. 199–200.

186. Henry D. Thoreau, “Walking” in Excursions, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Boston, 1906, V, p. 224.

Previous page Next page