stone-faced terraces have become overgrown here and there with thick matted brambles or moss; the stone steps that led down them have gaped apart, and lusty clumps of grass, burdock, and plantain have grown up between them; the stony paths leading through the glades have become almost obliterated by leaves, grass, and pine slats; but still the Bartram Botanical Gardens remain a fair proof of the energy, the perseverance, the taste, and the learning of their founder.

Bartram's life was of the simplest character. In spite of his position during the closing years of his life as the peer and fellow of the greatest natural scientists of his day, he retained even to the last the habits and customs of the simple farmer folk of whom he accounted himself one. A Russian gentleman, who visited the Botanical Gardens during the lifetime of their founder, in a letter to England thus graphically described the man and his surroundings:

"I was received at the door by a woman dressed extremely neat and simple, who, without courtesying, or any other ceremonial, asked me, with an air of benignity, who I wanted. I answered, 'I should be glad to see Mr. Bertram.' "If thee will step in and take a chair, I will send for him.'

"No,' I said, 'I had rather have the pleasure of walking through his farm; I shall easily find him out, with your directions.'

"After a little time I perceived the Schuylkill winding through delightful meadows, and soon cast my eyes upon a new-made bank, which seemed greatly to confine the stream.* After having walked upon its top a considerable way, I at last reached the place where ten men were at work. I asked if they could tell me where Mr. Bertram was. An eiderly looking man, with wide trousers and leathern apron on, looking at me, said, My name is Bertram: dost thee want me?'

"Sir, I am come on purpose to converse with you, if you can be spared from your labor.'

"Very easily,' he answered. 'I direct and advise more than I work.'

"We walked toward the house, where he made me sit down while he went to put on clean clothes, after which he returned and sat down by me.

Bartram was one of the prime movers in the work of embanking the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers a labor to which he devoted much time, toil, and money during his

life.

THE GARDEN PATH.

"The fame of your knowledge,' said I, 'in American botany, and your well-known hospitality, have induced me to pay you a visit, which I hope you will not find troublesome. I should be glad to spend a few hours in your garden.'

"The greatest advantage,' replied he, which I receive from what thee callest my botanical fame, is the pleasure which it often procureth me in receiving the visits of friends and foreigners. But our jaunt in the garden must be postponed for the present, as the bell is ringing for dinner.'

"We entered into a large hall, where there was a long table full of victuals; at the lowest part sat his negroes, his hired men were next, then the family and myself, and at the head the venerable father and his wife presided. Each reclined his head and said his prayers, divested of the tedious cant of some, and of the ostentatious style of others.

466

After the luxuries of our cities,' observed he, this plain fare must appear to thee a severe fast.'

"By no means, Mr. Bertram; this honest country dinner convinces me that you receive me as a friend and old acquaintance.'

"I am glad of it, for thee art heartily welcome. I never know how to use ceremonies; they are insufficient proofs of sincerity. Our society, besides, are utterly strangers to what are called polite expressions. We treat others as we treat ourselves. I received yesterday a letter from Philadelphia by which I understand thee art a Russian,

years.'

"Few years, Sir, will make anybody to journey over a great tract of country, but it requires a superior degree of knowledge to gather harvests as we go. Pray, Mr. Bertram, what banks are those you are making? to what purpose is so much expense and so much labor bestowed?'

"Friend Iwan, no branch of industry was ever more profitable to any country, as well as the proprietors. The Schuylkill, in its many windings, though its waters were but shallow even in its highest tides, and though some parts were always dry, yet the whole of this great tract presented to the eye nothing but a putrid swampy soil, useless either for the plough or the scythe. Now many thousand acres of meadow have been rescued from the Schuylkill and the Delaware, which both enricheth and embellisheth so much of the neighborhood of our city. Such is the excellence of these bottoms, and the goodness of the grass for fattening of cattle, that the produce of three years pays all advances.'

"By this time the working part of the family had finished their dinner, and had retired, with a decency and silence which pleased me much. Soon after I heard, as I thought, a distant concert of instruments. "However simple and pastoral your fare was, Mr. Bertram, this is the dessert of a prince; pray

what is this I hear?'

"Thee must not be alarmed; it is of a piece with the rest of thy treatment, friend Iwan.'

"Anxious, I followed the sound; and by ascending

the staircase found that it was the effect of the wind through the strings of an Eolian harp-an instrument which I had never before seen. After dinner we quaffed an honest bottle of Madeira wine, without the irksome labor of toasts, healths, or senti ments, and then retired into his study, from which we passed into the garden, which contained a great variety of curious plants and shrubs. Some grew in a greenhouse, over the door of which was written

these lines:

"Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,

But looks through Nature up to Nature's God."" The idyllic life of the Quaker farmer and botanist proved so attractive to the visitor that he ventured to hint his desire to remain several days in the family, to which desire he received the cordial answer: "Thee art as welcome as if I was thy father; thee art no stranger; thy desire for knowledge, thy being a foreigner, besides, entitleth thee to consider my house as thy own as long as thee pleaseth. Use thy time with the most perfect freedom; I too shall do so myself."

Making allowance for some natural warmth of coloring in the details of the visit which the young Russian describes through these and some succeeding pages, any one who is acquainted with Pennsylvania farm life among the peaceful people to whom John Bartram belonged-its quaintness, its simplicity, its freedom from ostentation and vanity, its sturdy yeomanlike honesty can recognize this picture as

Graphic and picturesque, in spite of verbal stiffness and simplicity of diction, are Bartram's own letters descriptive of his life, written chiefly to his life-long friend and helper, Peter Collinson, in London. Although on the terms of closest intimacy with Collinson, John Bartram never met him face to face. Their acquaintance began, flowered into friendship, and ripened into the most heart-felt sympathy entirely through written communications. Bartram's letters pass before us in a panorama, as it were-the life, the manners, the customs, of the time in which he lived. At one time he leads us with him through strange adventures in the wilderness just back of Philadelphia, or gathering pine cones in the almost impenetrable forests of the Jerseys, or on expeditions in swamps and moorlands, collecting specimens of the rank growth there-red-spotted lilies, cardinal-flowers, asters, and golden-rod. Sometimes the scene shifts to the old town of Philadelphia. Once there is an interview with the laughing philosopher Franklin in regard to Bartram's son "Billy." Billy's aspirations even at that early date tended toward the natural sciences. Possessed of considerable skill as an artist, he delighted in reproducing with his pencil the beautiful objects, vegetable and animal, by which he was surrounded. This turn was, however, anything but acceptable to his father. The old man had struggled so at the beginning of his scientific life that he was strongly opposed to William's passing through the like troubles. The youth had been apprenticed as a merchant, a planter, and a printer, and all had failed. In despair, John turned to Franklin for advice upon the subject. "He paused awhile," wrote Bartram, "and then said that there was a profitable business, which he now thought upon the increase that there was a very ingenious man in town who had business more than he could well manage with himself

and that was engraving, and which he thought would suit Billy well." But it did not suit Billy, who continued in his own particular path in life, in spite of all objections.

Those wilds of Kingsessing in which John Bartram resided, now a part of the city of Philadelphia, then about four miles

After many such adventures they at length reached Onondaga and the Six Nations. Here were they "lustily entertained," while the warriors, glittering with beads and gaudy with party-colored blankets, assembled from north, south, east, and west at the call of the chief at Onondaga, feasting on "corn dumplings," venison, and hominy, and wild beans wrapped in great leaves, over which the worthy botanist gloated with appetite whetted by forest travel. From this point Bartram visited the trading town of Oswego and Fort Frontenac, and the banks of Lake Ontario to some extent, coming back with the colonial agent to Philadelphia, which he reached after three months of absence, "returning thanks to the Almighty Power that had preserved us all, and had returned me safe from a savage land to home and family again."

This was the first journey of such extent into the then pathless wilderness that any single colonist had ever undertaken, and Bartram felt justly proud of it. This expedition seems far more interesting than one which he subsequently undertook into the Floridas-at least, while the narrative of the one abounds in adventures, the other is only a dull record of facts, compris ing a list of the various plants he discovered. This might have been owing to the fact that the Southern States at that time were the most thickly populated portion of the colonies, Virginia, at the beginning of the Revolution, having a population equal to the colonies of Pennsylvania and New York conjoined; or it might have been that a new dignity which had lately descended upon him in his appointment

esty George the Third had made him feel it incumbent upon him to be severely dull and dignifiedly prosy. However that may be, the record of the Southern journey is certainly not so redolent of interest as that to Onondaga. The botanist was nearly seventy years of age when he undertook this journey of several thousand miles, shipping from Philadelphia to Charleston, South Carolina. Thence he proceeded by land to St. Augustine, Florida East, from which point he explored the St. Johns River to its head waters, collecting many plants unknown at that day, and of great interest to the naturalist. In this expedition he made an accurate map of the river with its various lakes and branches, together with a chart of the width and depth of the stream at all available points-a work that was greatly approved by the Board of Trade and Plantations in England, who directed it to be published for the benefit of the new colony. It was just previous to this journey that Bartram, through the interest of his friend Collinson, received the appointment before alluded to of Royal Botanist for the Provinces-an appointment confirmed by the king, with a salary of fifty pounds sterling per annum-a small amount, indeed, in our days; but at that time English money was at a premium in America of about sixty or seventy per cent., and one penny then went nearly as far in purchasing power as a sixpence now; so that in the simple life of the oldtime colony the modest stipend was amply sufficient to ease the old botanist of all concern as to his worldly affairs, and from this time his life seems to have passed in serenity and ease. It is pleasant to think of the good old man's pathway being smoothed for him as he passed peacefully down into the dark vale whence none return. He lived until about eighty years of age, hale and strong, his only trouble being his dread that the iron heel of the Revolutionary war might tramp through his peaceful gardens. He was spared this trouble, for all alike reverenced and loved the gentle old man. After a very brief illness, shortened, it was said, by the battle of Brandywine, which occurred just prior to his death, he passed away, leaving behind him a son to perpetuate his name and labors, and to preserve intact the Bartram Botanical Garden.