mind of this pleasant raconteur, who brings home to the American reader the moral crisis, so memorable in the retrospect, which succeeded our premature battle for national honor and life-whose vital current, thus baffled, shrank back to the heart of the republic, only to return with fresh and permanent strength to every vein in the body politic, and vitalize the popular brain and heart with concentrated patriotic scope, insight, and action. Absorbing, however, as was the question of the hour even to a casual sojourner, the physical, social, and economical traits of the country were only more sympathetically examined by the intelligent party of the Prince because of the war cloud that overhung them; and we are transported from inland sea and lonely prairie to the capital of New England, where, says the Colonel, "for the first time I believed myself in Europe," and to quite other society than the governmental circles at Washington or the financial cliques of New York. At Cambridge and Boston, with Agassiz, Felton, Everett, and others, he found congenial minds. The speech of the latter at a parting banquet given the Prince, is noted as a model of tact and rhetoric; while "Vive la France," the refrain of Holmes' song, with happy augury cheered their departure.

CHAPTER X.

AMERICAN TRAVELLERS AND WRITERS.

JOHN AND WILLIAM BARTRAM; MADAME KNIGHT; LEDYARD; CARVER; JEFFERSON; IMLAY; DWIGHT; COXE; INGERSOLL; WALSH; PAULDING; FLINT; CLINTON; HALL; TUDOR; WIRT; COOPER ; HOFFMAN; OLMSTED; BRYANT; GOVERNMENT EXPLORATIONS; WASHINGTON; MRS. KIRKLAND; IRVING; AMERICAN ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE; BIOGRAPHY; HISTORY; MANUALS; ORATORY; ROMANCE; POETRY; LOCAL PICTURES; EVERETT, HAWTHORNE, CHANNING, ETC.

THERE is one class of travellers in America that have peculiar claims upon native sympathy and consideration; for neither foreign adventure nor royal patronage, nor even private emolument, prompted their journeyings. Natives of the soil, and inspired either by scientific or patriotic enthusiasm-not seldom by both-they strove to make one part of our vast country known to the other; to reveal the natural beauties and resources thereof to their neighbors, and to Europeans; and to promote national development by careful exploration and faithful reports. All the intelligent pioneers of our border civilization more or less enacted the part of beneficent travellers. Public spirit, in colonial and later times, found scope in expeditions which opened paths through the wilderness, tested soil, climate, and natural productions, and estimated the facilities hitherto locked up in primeval soli

tudes. Washington's early surveys, Boone's first sojourn in the woods of Kentucky, Clinton's visit to Western New York to trace the course of the Erie Canal, are examples of this incidental kind of home travel, so useful to the early statesmen and the political economists. At subsequent periods, the natural features of the Great West were revealed to us by Flint and Hall; New England local and social traits were agreeably reported by Tudor and Dwight; Lewis and Clarke gave the first authentic glimpses of the Rocky Mountains and the adjacent plains, afterward so bravely traversed by Fremont and others; and Schoolcraft gathered up the traditions and the characteristics of those regions still occupied by the aborigines; and while Audubon tracked the feathered creation along the whole Atlantic coast, Percival examined every rood of the soil of Connecticut.

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Among the most interesting of the early native travellers in America, are the two Bartrams. Their instinctive fondness for nature, a simplicity and veneration born of the best original Quaker influence, and habits of rural work and meditation, throw a peculiar charm around the memoirs of these kindly and assiduous naturalists, and make the account they have left of their wanderings fresh and genial, notwithstanding the vast progress since made in the natural sciences. John Bartram's name is held in grateful honor by botanists, as 'the first Anglo-American who conceived the idea of establishing a botanic garden, native and exotic." He was lured to this enterprise, and its kindred studies, by the habit of collecting American plants and seeds for his friend, Peter Collinson, of London. Encouraged by him, Bartram began to investigate and experiment in this pleasant field of inquiry. He was enabled to confirm Logan's theory in regard to maize, and to illustrate the sexes of plants. From such a humble and isolated beginning, botany expanded in this country into its present elaborate expositions. The first systematic enumeration of American plants was commenced in Holland, by Gronovius, from descriptions furnished by John Clayton, of Virginia. As early as 1732, Mark Catesby, of Virginia, had

published a volume on the "Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahamas." Colden, of New York, corresponded with European botanists, from his sylvan retreat near Newburg. We have already noticed the visit to America of a pupil of Linnæus-Peter Kalm. The labors of Logan, Dr. Mitchell, Dr. Adam Kuhn of Philadelphia, the first professor of botany there, the establishment of Hosack's garden in New York, Dr. Schoeffs, Humphrey Marshall, Dr. Cullen of Berlin, the two Michauxs, Clinton, and the Abbé Correa, promoted the investigation and elucidation of this science in America, until it became associated with the more recent accomplished expositors. But with the earliest impulse and record thereof, the name of John Bartram is delightfully associated; and it is as a naturalist that he made those excursions, the narrative of which retains the charm of ingenuous zeal, integrity, and kindliness. John Bartram was born in Delaware, then Chester County, Penn., in 1699. His great-grandfather had lived and died in Derbyshire, England; his grandfather followed William Penn to the New World, and settled in the State which bears the famous Quaker's name; his father married, "at Darby meeting, Elizabeth Hunt," and had three sons, of whom John, the eldest, inherited from an uncle the farm. His early education was meagre, as far as formal teaching is concerned. He studied the grammar of the ancient languages, and had a taste for the medical art, in which he acquired skill enough to make him a most welcome and efficient physician to the poor. It is probable that, as a simpler, seeking herbs of alleviating virtues, he was won to that love of nature, especially fruits, flowers, and plants, which became almost a ruling passion. But, according to the exigencies of the time and country, Bartram was an agriculturist by vocation, and assiduous therein; yet this did not prevent his indulging his scientific love of nature and his philosophic instinct: he observed and he reflected while occupied about his farm. The laws of vegetation, the loveliness of flowers, the mysteries of growth, were to him a perpetual miracle. To the thrift and sim

plicity of life common among the original farmers of America, he united an ardent love of knowledge and an admiration of the processes and the products of nature-partly a sentiment and partly a scientific impulse. Purchasing a tract on the banks of the Schuylkill, three miles from Philadelphia, he built, with his own hands, a commodious dwelling, cultivated five acres as a garden, and made continual journeys in search of plants. The place became so attractive, that visitors flocked thither. By degrees he gained acquaintances abroad, established correspondence and a system of exchanges with botanists, and so laid the foundation of botanical enterprise and taste in America. This hale, benign, and wise man, rarely combining in his nature the zeal and observant habitude of the naturalist with the serene self-possession of the Friend, travelled over a large part of the country, explored Ontario, the domain of the Iroquois, the shores and sources of the Hudson, Delaware, Schuylkill, Susquehanna, Alleghany, and San Juan. At the age of seventy he visited Carolina and Florida.

wonderful

Peter Collinson wrote of him to Colden as a natural genius, considering his education, and that he was never out of America, but is a husbandman." "His observations," he adds, "and accounts of all natural productions, are much esteemed here for their accuracy. It is really astonishing what a knowledge the man has attained merely by the force of industry and his own genius."

The journal* of his tour was sent to England, and was published “at the instance of several gentlemen." The preface shows how comparatively rare were authentic books of Travel from natives of America, and how individual were Bartram's zeal and enterprise in this respect. "The inhab itants of all the colonies," says the writer, "have eminently

* "Observations on the Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, &c., made by John Bartram in his Travels from Pensilvania to Onondaga, Oswego, and the Lake Ontario in Canada; to which is annexed a Curious Account of the Cataracts of Niagara, by Mr. Peter Kalm, a Swedish Gentleman who travelled there," London, 1751.