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Susan C. Imbarrato
From the first European contacts with the Americas, travelers have marked progress on land and by sea in letters, journals, reports, histories, and narratives. Exploration and acquisition motivated the earliest travel writings as lands were claimed and resources were assessed, which then justified funding for additional voyages and exploration in the quest to expand empire. More than just ship’s logs and charts, exploration literatures express distinct points of view intent on fashioning a new world amenable to cultivation and colonization as travelers try to make sense of their findings by comparisons and evaluations. Is this a hospitable location? Will it sustain settlement? Is it better or worse than from where they came? In the pursuit of wealth, commodity, and refuge, explorers and settlers tended toward hyperbole and metaphor in order to make the newfound lands appealing and yet somehow familiar. Early travel writings are thus prone to a master narrative of utopian possibilities, as with Christopher Columbus, Samuel de Champlain, and John Smith, and have an official, authoritative quality. In regard to both the captivity and slave narrative in which movement is not voluntary, the record of travel is one of displacement, encroachment, and enslavement, as with Cabeza de Vaca, Mary Rowlandson, and Olaudah Equiano. The travel records of the naturalist and botanist document the landscape, plants, and animals with a precision aimed at relaying information about the abundant variety of flora and fauna, as with John and William Bartram. For the religious seeker and itinerant preacher, travel takes on a more symbolic quality in the form of spiritual autobiography, as with Jonathan Edwards, Elizabeth Ashbridge, and John Woolman.
From these various perspectives, travel elicits an expectation of a report and an impression. As such, narratives of travel are simultaneously records of observation and assessment as each encounter challenges assumptions and sometimes inspires new ways of thinking. And while few people would have kept travel logs for personal records, they were more likely to send the occasional letter to let others know that they arrived and what they have seen, purchased, transacted, or delivered. For longer journeys, the travel diary serves as a record of distance traveled and of observations made. In each account, the conveyances of travel by horse, wagon, carriage, ship, canoe, and boat and the waiting for ferries to arrive, tides to subside, and storms to abate all illustrate the pace of travel and the complicated logistics that require constantly moving between land and water. As travelers describe roads, taverns, churches, and accommodations, and record their interactions with merchants, locals, and other travelers, they contribute to an important archival record about commerce, politics, religion, food, and trade.
To illustrate this variety, this essay provides an overview of early American travel writings from the colonial period through 1820, with examples from authors that include Jasper Danckaerts, Sarah Kemble Knight, William Byrd II, Dr. Alexander Hamilton, William Bartram, and Elizabeth House Trist. This overview, prefaced by a survey of critical approaches to the genre, reveals that travel writings extend the parameters of exploration narratives and provide a richly revealing source for understanding early America.
Historical Contexts and Critical Receptions
Travel writings welcome multilayered readings and interpretations. As historical and literary documents, they have often been referenced as part of a larger narrative that measures signs of progress and anticipates a new nation. In The Adventurous Muse: The Poetics of American Fiction, 1789–1900 (1977), William Spengemann finds that the eighteenth‐century travel narrative shows “Americans the meaning of their unique historical situation” (38–39). For Patricia M. Medeiros (1977), travel writers “helped to forge a sense of national identity by making distant places familiar, so that readers could see that they shared some important traits […] with their countrymen hundreds of miles away” (196). In this regard, travel records that had circulated in manuscript for the entertainment of friends and relatives were later printed with attention to their historical and literary significance, frequently creating a gap between composition and printing. In 1864, for example, Henry Cruse Murphy discovered a transcribed copy of Jasper Danckaerts’s seventeenth‐century journal in Amsterdam and translated and edited it for publication in 1867 by the Long Island Historical Society as the Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679–80. In 1825, Theodore Dwight published The Journal of Madam Knight, 1704–1705. In 1990, Annette Kolodny brought The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to Natchez, 1783–84 into print for the first time. In 1912, Max Farrand printed Margaret Van Horn Dwight’s travel account as A Journey to Ohio in 1810. In each instance, the traveler’s contemporary view of everyday life reaches across historical and literary periods and in doing so suggests a sense of continuity while also inviting dialogue.
In addition to appreciating travel writings for their historical importance, they are also valuable sources for examining transatlantic and transnational elements in regard to colonial and expansionist enterprises. Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992) and Ralph Bauer’s The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literature: Empire, Travel, Modernity (2003), for example, address attitudes of appropriation and raise questions about motive and intention in regard to travel writings. Edward G. Gray’s The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler (2007) examines similar topics in John Ledyard’s eighteenth‐century travels from the Bering Sea to the Pacific Islands, from London, England and to Yakutsk, Siberia, and beyond. Recent studies have also complicated notions of any one uniform reading of travel writings regarding both geography and attitudes and instead note regional diversity, as in Edward Watts’s An American Colony: Regionalism and the Roots of Midwestern Culture (2001) with its shift in attention from the eastern seaboard to the Midwest. John D. Cox, in turn, brings attention to the southern colonies in Traveling South: Travel Narratives and the Construction of American Identity (2005) and observes: “‘Travel literature’ is less about particular types of travel than it is about almost any kind of published writing that describes the movement of individuals into ‘contact zones’ of one type or another” (14). Travel writings are thus important sources for understanding cultural encounters, local and abroad.
Ecocriticism and environmental studies incorporate several of these threads with a focus on interactions between the traveler and nature. In Thomas Hallock’s From the Fallen Tree: Frontier Narratives, Environmental Politics, and the Roots of a National Pastoral, 1749–1826 (2003), for example, he notes that in William Bartram’s Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida: The Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws (1791), “The narrator wanders from travelogue, to taxonomy, to spontaneous effusion. A short account of Florida is, in modern terms, ecologically based.” Hallock illustrates these qualities in Bartram’s sequential descriptions of “a flower and then a spider on a leaf,” then “insects to bumblebees,” “a bird,” and “then back to the flower” (153). The traveler’s exquisite attention to specificity and detail thus provides a vital resource as interpreter of the landscape. Other studies integrate both literary and botanical interests. Timothy Sweet’s American Georgics: Economy and Environment in American Literature, 1580–1864 (2002) examines, as he explains, “a particular mode of environmental writing, which I am provisionally calling the American georgic. Writings in this mode take as their primary topic the work of defining the basic terms of the human community’s relationship to the natural environment” (2). In Susan Scott Parrish’s American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (2006), a dynamic transatlantic dialogue between naturalists is impressively documented with discussions of Thomas Harriot, Robert Beverley, William Byrd II, among others. Parrish thus elaborates: “Bringing the natural world more centrally into histories of culture makes particular historiographic sense for colonial America and the early nation” (20). In making these connections, narratives of travel again serve as a key resource.
Critical approaches to travel writings also focus on aesthetic aspects, as in Elizabeth Bohls’s Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716–1818 (1995) and Edward Cahill’s Liberty of the Imagination: Aesthetic Theory, Literary Form, and Politics in the Early United States (2012), where he examines “landscape descriptions from the Revolution through the 1790s, emphasizing the way their rhetoric of beauty and sublimity mediates the politics of exploration and settlement” (105). Travelers on the American Grand Tour illustrate these intersections between travel and aesthetics as they embark on journeys for rejuvenation with destinations such as the famed spa at Saratoga Springs. In American Writers and the Picturesque Tour: The Search for American Identity, 1790–1860 (1997), Beth L. Lueck finds: “American travelers’ passion for picturesque beauty was fostered by various accounts of landscapes worth viewing, by artists’ renderings of scenery that appeared in periodicals in the form of woodcuts and engravings, as well as in paintings, and by the nationalistic fervor following the War of 1812” (4). Travel guides also offer important details about both travel and travelers, as in Theodore Dwight’s The Northern Traveller: Containing the Routes to Niagara, Quebec, and the Springs, with Descriptions of the Principal Scenes, and Useful Hints to Strangers (1824), with a sixth edition in 1841, and Henry Dilworth Gilpin’s The Northern Tour: Being a Guide to Saratoga, Lake George, Niagara, Canada, Boston, &c., &c., Through the States of Pennsylvania, New‐Jersey, New‐York, Vermont, New‐Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode‐Island, and Connecticut: Embracing an Account of the Canals, Colleges, Public Institutions, Natural Curiosities, and Interesting Objects Therein (1825). To assist the traveler with sketching and drawing techniques, William Gilpin’s Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape (1792) provides philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings.
Although travel in colonial America had largely been conducted by men as merchants, physicians, ministers, lawyers, and messengers, women also traveled to visit relatives, minister to others, and conduct business. As a result, accommodations that were once assumed to be for male occupancy only required adjustments for both propriety and privacy, and assumptions about a woman’s genteel stature and social position were subject to reevaluation. Women’s travel experiences thus provide another avenue of investigation as women view their surroundings with a critical eye for migration, adventure, and settlement. As travelers, they challenge assumptions about gender, and as chroniclers they encourage women’s voices as social critics. Annette Kolodny’s groundbreaking studies The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (1975) and The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630–1860 (1984) address these different perspectives from men and women. Kolodny notes, for example, that while men sought to conquer the landscape, women desired to domesticate it, arguing that “women claimed the frontiers as a potential sanctuary for an idealized domesticity” (1984: xiii).
In a parallel venture to the various critical approaches to travel writings, historians and editors have been actively involved in the process of recovering these accounts. In the early twentieth century, Alice Morse Earle’s Stage‐Coach and Tavern Days (1900) and Mary Caroline Crawford’s Little Pilgrimages Among Old New England Inns: Being an Account of Little Journeys to Various Quaint Inns and Hostelries of Colonial New England (1907) collated accounts that brought attention to the traveler as a keen observer of early American life and manners. Reuben Gold Thwaites’ 32‐volume Early Western Travels, 1748–1846: A Series of Annotated Reprints […] During the Period of Early American Settlement (1900–1907) documented westward migration motivated by both economic gain and adventure. Contemporary authors and editors continue to engage in the painstaking archival work of recovery, and many riches await scholars who seek to expand our knowledge of the canon of travel writings.
The study of early American travel writings continues to develop with attention to spatial studies that consider relationships between people, places, and perceptions. In addition, the study of the history of medicine and science draws upon travel writings for what they yield about medical practices and medicinals and vital knowledge from Native Americans about plants and curatives. Travelers’ accounts by colonial figures, such as John and Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, continue to be revisited for their observations while traveling and living abroad. More attention is needed, however, in regard to acknowledging travelers’ diverse voices and the ways travel may have been experienced differently by, for example, Native Americans and African Americans. This study would, in turn, require situating different life experiences with attention to both content and genre. And, as scholars of travel writings continue to show interest in a variety of genres, including prose, poetry, fiction, and drama, the links between historical records and their fictional counterparts might be explored more extensively. Travelers and travel narrative plots are, for example, found in the works of Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Susanna Rowson, Lenora Sansay, and Catherine Maria Sedgwick.
As this overview of critical approaches suggests, early American travel writings enhance studies of migration and expansion; the history of medicine and science; and of community, government, and social development. The following discussion of select travel writings from the colonial period to 1820, organized thematically, illustrates this variety of topics, perspectives, styles and critical approaches.
Travelers’ Observations, Ruminations, and Tales
For Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, who toured the northern colonies on a secret mission as land agents for the Protestant sect of the Labadists, travel was an especially investigative act, for which they even assumed aliases: Jasper went by the name of Schilders and Peter was called Vorstman. As the record of their voyage from Holland to America and their subsequent travels in New Netherland, New England, and the Chesapeake, the Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679–80 (1913) notes lands, plants, and commodity prices, all presented from the perspective granted by their proprietary status. As reformers, they comment on and visit various religious groups, including Catholics, Quakers, Jews, and Protestants. They are especially interested in potential converts, as on 24 April 1680, outside of Albany, New York, where they meet a woman who asks for advice regarding her four‐year‐old son “who was dumb, or whose tongue had grown fast,” to which they reply that they “were not doctors or surgeons, but we gave her our opinion, just as we thought.” When they discover that she is “a Christian” and “how she had embraced Christianity,” they learn that her father was a Christian and her mother a Mohawk and of her subsequent alienation from her family because of her conversion (202–203). This meeting leads to an extended conversation about conversion that inspires Danckaerts and Sluyter regarding the potential for religious community in the colonies. In other instances, the Journal exposes their vulnerability as travelers, as on 11 December, 1679, in the Chesapeake area: “We were utterly perplexed and astray. We followed the roads as we found them, now easterly and then westerly, now a little more on one side, and then a little more on the other, until we were completely tired out, and wished ourselves back again upon the strand” (124). In Boston, on 24 June 1680, they meet briefly with Governor Simon Bradstreet: “He is an old man, quiet, and grave. He was dressed in black silk, but not sumptuously. […] He then presented us a small cup of wine, and with that we finished” (259). On 8 July, they visit John Eliot who gives them “one of the Old Testaments in the Indian language, and also almost the whole of the New Testament, made up with some sheets of the new edition of the New Testament” (264). In the weeks before their departure, Danckaerts and Sluyter fall under suspicion for several reasons: as possible Jesuits; for being “cunning and subtle of mind and judgment”; and because they “had come there without carrying on any traffic or any other business, except only to see the place and country” (269). Eventually cleared of the accusations, Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter leave Boston on 23 July 1680, and though they had found a site for their colony, neither of them ever returned. With its elements of secrecy and reconnaissance, the Journal of Jasper Danckaerts shows how the traveler can be a source of both curiosity and scrutiny.
Another example of a travel narrative that yields several avenues of investigation is Sarah Kemble Knight’s The Journal of Madam Knight, 1704–1705 (1994) that recounts her five‐month, 200‐mile journey from Boston to New York to settle the estate of a relative in New Haven. Embellished with vivid storytelling, complete with dialogue, poetry, and fanciful imagery, Knight often places the traveler at center stage as one who brings news and is in many cases news itself. On 2 October 1704, for example, when she arrives after her first day of travel to Billings’s Inn, the landlord’s daughter, Debb, has this reaction: “Law for mee – what in the world brings You here at this time a night? – I never see a woman on the Rode so Dreadfull late […] Who are You? Where are You going?” To “get ridd” of these “unmannerly Questions,” Knight replies, “I told her I come there to have the post’s company with me to‐morrow on my Journey, &c” (1994: 54). Not only do the questions offend Knight’s genteel sensibilities but also the assumption that a woman traveling alone and so late at night may have a less than respectable intention. Debb’s remarks also illustrate the rarity of a woman traveling without a male relative as an escort. In Knight’s frequent comments about meals and service, she also marks concerns about manners and makes social distinctions, as on 6 October, when she describes a landlady who came in with “her hair about her ears, and hands at full pay scratching. Shee told us shee had some mutton wch shee would broil, wch I was glad to hear.” Knight is not only disappointed with the landlady who “forgot to wash her scratchers,” but also the meal itself: “it being pickled, and my Guide said it smelt strong of head sause, we left it, and pd sixpence a piece for our Dinners, wch was only smell” (62). That she could afford to pay for a meal that “was only smell” reflects her social position as superior. Such incidents thus invite readings from both gender and social class perspectives. They also illustrate Sargent Bush, Jr.’s (1990) observation that Knight’s “awareness of social difference between herself and the many local people she encountered along her way does create a humorous satirical dimension in the work” (76).
Knight also employs her literary skills in more sympathetic portraits, as on 4 October when she stops “at a little cottage Just by the River, to wait the Waters falling” that then prompts this description: “This little Hutt was one of the wretchedest I ever saw a habitation for human creatures” (60). This dwelling near the Paukataug River is poorly constructed, with gaps in the siding that causes light to “come throu’ every where; the doore tyed on wth a cord in the place of hinges; The floor the bear earth.” Although Knight finds “all and every part being the picture of poverty,” she commends this family of four: “Notwithstanding both the Hutt and its Inhabitance were very clean and tydee.” This scene then causes her to reflect: “I Blest myselfe that I was not one of this misserable crew,” which leads to composing a poem “on the very Spott” that ends: “When I reflect, my late fatigues do seem / Only a notion or forgotten Dreem” (60). As Knight shifts between prose, verse, and theatrical characterizations, she brings conscious self‐reflection that complements the travel record as a guide for other travelers and as a source of entertainment.
On Saturday, 7 October, Knight arrives in New Haven to settle her cousin Caleb Trowbridge’s estate on behalf of his widow, and though the legal matters are not recorded, Knight does provide an overview of Connecticut. She finds that the people are “a little too much Independant in their principalls” and “too Indulgent (especially the farmers) to their slaves: suffering too great familiarity from them, permitting thm to sit at Table and eat with them, (as they say to save time).” She also remarks: “There are every where in the Towns as I passed, a Number of Indians the Natives of the Country” (63–65). When the negotiations are recessed for two weeks, Knight and Thomas Trowbridge, Caleb’s brother, travel to New York. In Rye, Knight provides valuable, historical details as she describes her room: “a little Lento Chamber furnisht amongst other Rubbish with a High Bedd and a Low one, a Long Table, a Bench and a Bottomless chair.” Knight then finds “my Covering as scanty as my Bed was hard,” and as a result: “poor I made but one Grone, which was from the time I went to bed to the time I Riss, which was about three in the morning” (67). This last comment refers to the set schedule of the post to which travelers had to conform and about which they all complained. She does find the “Cittie of New York” itself to be “a pleasant, well compacted place, situated on a Commodius River wch is a fine harbour for shipping” (69). On 23 December, Knight arrives in Fairfield, Connecticut, which she describes as “a considerable town, and filld as they say with wealthy people – have a spacious meeting house and good Buildings. But the Inhabitants are Litigious.” She then notes the town’s “aboundance of sheep, whose very Dung brings them great gain, with part of which they pay their Parsons sallery, And they Grudg that, preferring their Dung before their minister” (72). A potentially flattering portrait thus rapidly changes into a critical sketch as Knight critiques both social class and religious attitudes. On 3 March 1705, Knight returns to Boston: “I found my aged and tender mother and my Dear and only Child in good health with open arms redy to receive me,” and together with “Kind relations and friends flocking in to welcome mee and hear the story of my transactions and travails” (74–75). With traveler as both witness and commentator, Sarah Kemble Knight’s Journal blends narrative techniques of description, anecdotes, poetry, and dialogue that illustrate the physical, social, and cultural aspects of early American life. In doing so, Knight expands the conventional format of a travel record and anticipates the integration of multiple genres in travel writings.
Several travelers’ accounts are also by turns informative, entertaining, and critical. Andrew Burnaby’s Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North‐America in the Years 1759 and 1760 (1775) is written from the viewpoint of a curious Englishman who begins his tour in Williamsburg, Virginia on 5 July 1759, proceeds to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and makes observations about buildings, people, religion, climate, plants, rivers, and crops. On 12 October, from New Hampshire, three weeks before his departure, Burnaby (1960) summarizes his “1200 miles” of travel “over so large a tract of this vast continent” and comments on the future of the colonies, especially the assumption that “empire is travelling westward” and an “expectation” that “America is to give law to the rest of the world.” He finds this idea “illusory and fallacious,” noting that “America is formed for happiness, but not for empire,” and adds, “I did not see a single object that solicited charity; but I saw insuperable causes of weakness, which will necessarily prevent its being a potent state” (109–110). For Burnaby, the travel record thus serves as a platform for asserting the domination of the British empire. Travelers also compose their adventures in an entertaining manner, as with Jonathan Carver’s Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768 (1778) that describes an expedition in search of a Northwest Passage. Myra Jehlen (1994) acknowledges Carver’s “paramount interest in telling a good story,” which contributes to its popularity as “a book of its time whose importance today lies in representing an era when the exploration of the New World could now be undertaken with the attitude of a storyteller” (129). In another example, Timothy Dwight’s four‐volume Travels in New England and New York (1821–1822) mixes forms and content as he alternates descriptive passages with historical overviews. From 1796 to 1815, while a minister and president of Yale College in New Haven, Dwight (1969) made periodic journeys that covered over 18 000 miles. His notebooks were published posthumously and presented as a collection of travel letters addressed to an unnamed Englishman, “Dear Sir.” Throughout, Dwight praises the bounties of America with a promotional quality intended to correct misperceptions from Anglo‐European visitors. Similar to the popular encyclopedias on both sides of the Atlantic, he includes charts and extensive narratives about geography, climate, and people as he touts New England as “the healthiest country in the United States” (58). Dwight also includes sections on the different regions, sources of commerce, and tribes of the Native Americans that together present a distinctive portrait of early America.
While early American travel accounts had initially focused on the eastern seaboard, Elizabeth House Trist brings travel writings westward when she departs Philadelphia, in late December 1783, for the Ohio frontier in order to join her husband, Nicholas Trist, who had purchased land on the Mississippi River near Natchez eight years earlier. The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to Natchez, 1783–84 (1990) includes narrative description, dialogue, and scientific notation, with the latter emphasis a request from her friend Thomas Jefferson who was interested in knowing more about these frontier lands. Accompanied by Alexander Fowler, a friend of her husband’s, and Polly, a young, female companion, Trist rides across snow‐filled valleys, sails down rushing rivers, fights off swarms of mosquitos, and endures incessant heat. While in Pittsburgh, 9 January to 20 May 1784, Trist evaluates the potential for crops: “The land is fertile and capable of raising all kinds of grain” (212). On the Ohio River, 10 June 1784, she records one of several encounters with Native Americans: “Two Indians and a very handsome squaw with a young child. […] One of the fellows calls himself James Dickison. He is one of their chiefs, and a sensible fierce looking fellow.” After sharing a meal, Trist “carried the Squaw some bread. […] and as her Infant was exposed to the sun, I gave her my Hankerchief to shade it, for which she seem’d very thankfull” (222). On 15 June, on the Mississippi, Trist reflects: “Every one thinks their troubles the greatest, but I have seen so many poor creatures since I left home who’s situation has been so wretched, that I shall begin to consider my self as a favord child of fortune.” She then describes meeting an impoverished family with five children to which they “gave some flour” and Trist gave the women “some tea and sugar, which was more acceptable than diamonds or pearls” (226). In such portraits, Trist counters assumptions about westward migration, suggesting that it is neither one of conquest nor profit. Her own journey ends in sorrow on 1 July 1784, “Within a few miles of the Natchez,” when they stop “to unload some flour” (232). For unbeknownst to Trist, her husband Nicholas had died on 24 February, while she had been in Pittsburgh (232), and as Kolodny explains, “Presumably the news reached Trist on July 1, when the boat docked […] and the diary abruptly breaks off” (194). Elizabeth House Trist’s travel diary offers a realistic record of westward travel that invites readings from transnational studies and feminist perspectives, for example, as she ventures into the frontier and documents the unpredictability of travel and, subsequently, the constant need for adaptation and resilience.
Dr. Alexander Hamilton’s travel narrative is an extraordinary resource for studies about the history of medicine and science as well as of sociability and manners in colonial America. Combining travel with rehabilitation, Hamilton embarks on a four‐month journey in hopes of alleviating his symptoms of tuberculosis. He leaves Annapolis, Maryland on 30 May 1744, travels north to York, Maine, and returns on 27 September. Hamilton then copied his travel notes and titled his record the Itinerarium, which was first published in 1907, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart. Having emigrated from Edinburgh, Scotland in 1738, Hamilton views his surroundings as an educated gentleman conversant in the arts of sociability and decorum. In Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America (2008), Elaine G. Breslaw provides a fascinating, transatlantic perspective of Hamilton’s life and travels, noting that his travel diary is “filled with pointed and amusing observations on the manners, morals, religious proclivities, and occupations of the people he met” (115). On 8 June in Philadelphia, for example, Hamilton describes a tavern scene “with a very mixed company of different nations and religions” that includes “Scots, English, Dutch, Germans, and Irish; there were Roman Catholicks, Church men, Presbyterians, Quakers, Newlightmen, Methodists, Seventh day men, Moravians, Anabaptists, and one Jew.” He then describes their setting: “The whole company consisted of 25 planted round an oblong table in a great hall well stoked with flys” (Hamilton 1994: 191). Similar to Knight’s characterizations, Hamilton thus identifies class distinctions while also inserting comical notes. On his way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire on 1 August, Hamilton again displays his wit while responding to an “inquisitive” traveler who questions him in “the rustic civil stile.” Hamilton introduces himself as “Bombast Huynhym van Helmont […] a High German alchymist” who sells air (268). Hamilton appears to derive his wit from his interest in literature, which he notes throughout his travel diary, including Montaigne’s Essays, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Rollin’s Belles Lettres, Quevedo’s Quevedo’s Visions, Burton’s History of the Nine Worthies, and Homer’s Iliad. As such, his reading materials both parallel the topic of travel and illustrate his cosmopolitan tastes.
Among other topics, Hamilton’s Itinerarium also provides detailed accounts of colonial clubs and taverns as he socializes with other physicians and meets with prominent figures, as in, for example, the Governour’s Club in Philadelphia, the Hungarian Club in New York, and the Sun Tavern in Boston. As a doctor, Hamilton has a keen interest in learning about plants as potential medicinals, such as ginseng, and his various entries show how important this knowledge was to a practicing physician. Hamilton is also traveling through the colonies during a time of heightened theological debate and religious enthusiasm, about which he comments frequently. In Boston on 16 August, he notes: “There are many different religions and perswasions here, but the chief sect is that of the Presbyterians. There are above 25 churches, chapells, and meetings in the town” (284). He also comments on Quakers, Moravians, and “New Light” teachers. In addition to attending Anglican and Catholic services throughout his journey, on 5 September, in New York, Hamilton also attends a Jewish service. Other examples of Hamilton’s encounters with diverse audiences are reflected in his portraits of Native Americans in which he notes their different tribes and describes conflicts between Indigenous rights and colonial claims. Frequent comments about women indicate both his preferences and dislikes. Returning to Annapolis on 27 September “att two o’clock afternoon,” Hamilton ends his “perigrinations” that mark “a course of 1624 miles”; whereby, he reports: “I compassed my design in obtaining a better state of health.” He then offers a summary: “I found but little difference in the manners and character of the people in the different provinces […] but as to constitutions and complexions, air and government, I found some variety.” He also draws a comparison between the “northeren parts,” which were “in generall much better settled than the southeren” and concludes with this assessment: “As to politeness and humanity, they are much alike except in the great towns where the inhabitants are more civilized, especially att Boston” (326–327). As he remarks on people, trade, politics, and religion, Hamilton provides a remarkable portrait of colonial America.
William Byrd II’s experience as a surveyor appointed to establish the border between North Carolina and Virginia in 1728 generates another fascinating colonial travel narrative that also lends itself to various readings and critical approaches. With a mix of empirical data, historical record, local history, and literary flourish, he chronicles the expedition in parallel accounts. The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina is the official record, first printed in 1841, and The Secret History of the Line is an embellished account printed in 1929, with elements of Restoration comedy and pseudonyms for members of the surveying party, including commissioners and chaplains, with Byrd himself as “Steady.” For all the frivolity and punning of the Secret History, both accounts provide an important record. In William K. Boyd’s 1929 introduction, he commends the History “as a classic of the colonial period of American literature, an invaluable source for the social history,” and “a comprehensive and dependable account” on setting the boundary (Byrd 1967: xxiii). Percy G. Adams finds that both versions “comprise a strikingly unique kind of travel book,” and that “[t]ogether they make up a volume that is important for eighteenth‐century prose, for early American history, and for travel literature” (Byrd 1967: v, xxi). This discussion focuses on the History, as Byrd meticulously documents the surveyors’ progress from 28 February to 22 November 1728, an overall distance of “at least Six Hundred Miles” (320).
The expedition itself attracted great interest, as on Sunday, 24 March, when church attendance swelled because of their presence and the anticipation of “guessing, at least, whereabouts, the Line wou’d cut, whereby they might form Some Judgment whether they belong’d to Virginia or Carolina” (88). Byrd also adds commentary about the people that they meet, as on 11 March, when he describes “a Family of Mulattoes, that call’d themselves free,” a half mile into the woods: “It is certain many Slaves Shelter themselves in this Obscure Part of the World, nor will any of their righteous Neighbours discover them” (56). On 16 March, he describes a Quaker meeting house with an “Awkward Ornament on the West End of it, that seem’d to Ape a Steeple. I must own I expected no such Piece of Foppery from a Sect of so much outside Simplicity” (68). As an aristocrat, planter, and proud Virginian, Byrd includes a running commentary on North Carolinians. For example, on 25 March, as they are moving westward from the Dismal Swamp: “Surely there is no place in the World where the Inhabitants live with less Labour than in N Carolina.” Byrd then punctuates this comment: “It approaches nearer to the Description of Lubberland than any other, by the great felicity of the Climate, the easiness of raising Provisions, and the Slothfulness of the People” (90, 92).1 By contrast, on 4 April he has this praise for planters on both sides of the line: “It is an Observation, which rarely fails of being true, both in Virginia and Carolina, that those who take care to plant good Orchards are, in their General characters, Industrious People” (110). Byrd’s approval privileges an idyllic, agrarian view in which the planter brings order to the landscape. In this regard, Ralph Bauer (2003) finds: “The ‘History’ thus invented Virginia as a distinct geocultural entity that could henceforth definitively be known in counter‐distinction to North Carolina, hereby manifesting the hand of the self‐creating imperial historian Byrd” (188).
Byrd’s History includes numerous passages about their interactions with Native Americans, as on 7 April when they visit the Nottoway Indians, and he describes their fort, customs, dress, and housing. He also remarks on their trade with the Indians and the potential for conversion, by recommending intermarrying as “but one way of Converting these poor Infidels, and reclaiming them from Barbarity” (120). There are several entries about “our Friend Bearskin,” a member of the Saponi tribe who is traveling with the expedition as a scout, as on 13 October, when they examine him “concerning the Religion of his Country,” and Bearskin explains: “That God is very just and very good – ever well pleas’d with those men who possess those God‐like Qualities” (198). After summarizing the “Substances of Bearskin’s Religion,” Byrd notes that it “was as much to the purpose as cou’d be expected from a meer State of Nature,” faulting it for lacking “one Glimpse of Revelation or Philosophy,” and praising it for containing “the three Great Articles of Natural Religion: The Belief of a God; The Moral Distinction betwixt Good and Evil; and the Expectation of Rewards and Punishments in Another World” (202) – faint praise indeed, such that it intends to assert his superior perspective while it inadvertently presents the eloquence of Bearskin’s language and his thoughtful explanations.
In addition to scientific notations, Byrd often embellishes his descriptions of the land with poetic imagery. On 25 October, after an overnight rain shower, he observes: “The Air clearing up this Morning, we were again agreeably surprised with a full Prospect of the Mountains” (232); and on 6 November: “There was no passing by the angle of the River without halting a moment to entertain our Eyes again with that Charming Prospect” (268). Entries about plants and herbs, in turn, catalogue various uses, as on 7 November: “as a Help to bear Fatigue I us’d to chew a Root of Ginseng as I Walk’t along. This kept up my Spirits” (272). Other entries note the behaviors of animals, including horses, their endurance as well as their tendency to wander off, along with comments about beavers, turtles, otters, and buffalo. Byrd appears to be fascinated by bears, noting their habits and providing information about using their hides and horns for clothing and utensils, and their oil as an insect repellent, as on 7 November: “Bears’ Oyl is used by the Indians as a General Defence, against every Species of Vermin” (276). On 26 October, he notes a rare sighting of elk: “They are very shy, and have the Sense of Smelling so exquisite that they wind a man at a great distance” (236). Birds are frequently observed, as on 9 October: “A great Flock of Cranes flew over our Quarters, that were exceedingly Clamorous in their Flight” (190). Throughout, Byrd’s interactions with his surroundings reflect his avid curiosity, even as they reinforce assumptions of ownership and control. By 14 November, they had “happily arriv’d within 20 Miles of the uppermost Inhabitants” and arranged for “an express to carry a Letter to the Governor, giving an Account that we were all returned in Safety” (294, 296). In one of the final entries, on 22 November, Byrd frames the overall expedition in heroic terms: “we extented the Line within the Shadow of the Chariky Mountains, where we were oblig’d to Set up our Pillars, like Hercules, and return Home” (318). William Byrd II thus fashions the landscape according to a particular purpose and characterizes movement itself as progress, especially as they travel westward.
William Bartram’s 1791 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, 1773–74, a Report to Dr. John Fothergill: Miscellaneous Writings (1996) documents his findings with great precision while he is immersed in the life of plants and animals. Nature affords many harmonious scenes for Bartram, as on 22 April 1776, while traveling in South Carolina where he enters an “ancient sublime forest, frequently intersected with extensive avenues, vistas and green lawns, opening to extensive savannas and far distant Rice plantations” and finds that it “agreeably employs the imagination, and captivates the senses by scenes of magnificence and grandeur” (256). Bartram’s beautiful drawings of plants and animals in turn enhance his idyllic representations as he blends his scientific interest with embellished prose to create yet another interesting variation of the traveler’s record.
For Margaret Van Horn Dwight, the niece of Timothy Dwight and the great‐great‐niece of Jonathan Edwards, travel into the Ohio frontier is far from a romantic adventure, and much more of an arduous journey, for, as she notes, “We have concluded the reason so few are willing to return from the Western country, is not that the country is so good, but because the journey is so bad” (1912: 36–37). Dwight left New Haven, Connecticut on 19 October 1810, for a 600‐mile, four‐month journey to Warren, Ohio, accompanied by the Reverend and Mrs. Wolcott and their daughter, Susan. In her narrative printed in 1912 as A Journey to Ohio in 1810, Dwight combines observations about roads, accommodations, and fellow travelers with commentary, as on 4 November, in East Pensboro township, Pennsylvania: “I believe no regard is paid to the sabbath any where in this State – It is only made a holiday of” (28). In such comments, Dwight illustrates Kolodny’s (1992) discussion of the “frontier” as a borderland, “that liminal landscape of changing meanings on which distinct human cultures first encounter one another’s ‘otherness’ and appropriate, accommodate, or domesticate it through language” (9). Dwight not only resists her movement toward the borderlands, but also expresses anxiety that she might be subsumed by her new surroundings. Dwight also reacts to assumptions that a single woman, especially one traveling into the Ohio frontier, must be in search of a husband, as on 31 October, from Highdleburg: “If I were going to be married I would give my intended, a gentle emetic, or some such thing to see how he would bear being sick a little – for I could not coax a husband as I would a child, only because he was a little sick & a great deal cross – I trust I shall never have the trial – I am sure I should never bear it with temper & patience” (23). From her forthright view of the frontier, Dwight thus counters notions of westward migration as a fundamentally beneficial enterprise.
Other travelers present their military and scientific perspectives. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (2003), for instance, record their two‐year, 8000‐mile round trip journey from the Missouri River to the Oregon coast, 14 May 1804 to 23 September 1806, to document the expedition known as the Corps of Discovery. Eventually printed as The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark, in 12 volumes (1986–2001), their entries are often animated and enthusiastic, as they chart the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and beyond to the Pacific Ocean. For example, on 29 June 1805, Lewis writes from the “Upper Portage Camp” in Montana: “I have scarcely experienced a day since my first arrival in this quarter without experiencing some novel occurrence among the party or witnessing the appearance of some uncommon object” (170). Acknowledging the vital assistance from Native Americans including Sacagawea, as a guide, Lewis and Clark carry out Thomas Jefferson’s instructions to seek peaceful relations, as Clark indicates on 19 October 1805, from their camp near the Walla Walla River, when they meet with Chief Yellepit: “we Smoked with them, enformed them as we had all others above as well as we Could by Signs of our friendly intentions towards our red children Perticular those who opened their ears to our Councils” (267). Their Journals include conventional cataloging of land, plants, and people, while expressing a strong sense of history in the making, as they fulfill the charge of their expedition.
As this overview of early American travel writings suggests, the scope of this genre allows for a range of content, style, and intention as travelers traverse landscapes and encounter new peoples and customs. Travelers may think that they have a clear sense of purpose and mission, but as their journals and diaries reveal, travel can be both disturbing and transformative. As scholarly discussion continues to investigate the varied relationships between traveler and locale, travel writings that may have once been considered ancillary demonstrate their importance as archival sources and subjects of critical study. From their various reactions, travelers and their travel writings contribute to a diverse, engaging record of early America.
References
See also: chapter 2 (cross‐cultural encounters in early american literatures); chapter 3 (settlement literatures before and beyond the stories of nations); chapter 9 (environment and environmentalism); chapter 15 (writing lives).
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