SOURCE: Moore, Hugh. “The Southern Landscape of William Bartram: A Terrible Beauty.” Essays in Arts and Sciences 10, no. 1 (1981): 41-50.

In the following essay, Moore argues that Bartram's Travels is powerful and effective because of the writer's ability “to write as a Romantic poet with a sense of wonder, feeling, and imagination and as a scientific Rationalist like his father.”

William Bartram's Travels (1791) is perhaps the most comprehensive work from early America. It is a pioneering and inclusive natural history of the new world—its botany, zoology, geology, ethnology—with observations on agricultural, industrial, and commercial development. It is a history and a sociological study of the South. It is a philosophical and religious quest attempting to relate man, nature, and God. It is a practical handbook on gardening and the use of plants for food and medicine. It is literature that in its narratives of wilderness adventures and...