SOURCE: Slaughter, Thomas P. “Perspectives.” In The Natures of John and William Bartram, pp. 177-96. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

In the following essay, Slaughter claims that, while Travels is a complicated work that has many facets, there is one message that Bartram wanted to voice more than any other: “all of nature is one … and infused with the spirit of its creator.”

Is William Bartram's Travels poetry, readers have asked, fiction, or science? Are the author and the “philosophical pilgrim” the same person or different ones sharing the same name? Is the story true, readers have always wanted to know, or did the author alter the record and transfigure time—create, transform, embellish, recall things that never happened, and forget some that did? The answer to all these questions is yes; the book is all these things and more.

The Travels is a complicated story told by...