20 The Environmental Debate
dung and cultivation, will produce good corn,
potatoes, and cotton; the large palmetto declin-
ing ground, between the pines and swamps, are
moist and seem rich, and perhaps will suit both
corn and indigo; but the shelly bluffs seem to be
the most fertile spots of high ground, and the
Indians chief plantations for corn and pumkins:
That which is called hammocky ground is gen-
erally full of large evergreens and water-oaks,
mixed with red-bay and magnolia, and in many
places the great palmetto or cabbagetree: this is
generally reckoned proper both for corn, cotton,
and indigo: but the marshes and swamps (so
extensive upon the river St. John's) are exceed-
ingly rich, the last of which are full of large ash,
maple, and elm, being of an unknown depth of
rich mud; so are the marshes on the upper part
of the river, which are covered with water-canes
and reeds, as the lower marshes are with grass
and weeds; all of which when they are drained
dry, will produce, in all probability, great crops
of corn and indigo, and without much or any
draining, a fine increase of rice....
St. John's river, by its near affinity to the sea, is
well replenished with variety of excellent fish, as
bass, sea-trout, sheep-head, drums, mullets, cats,
garr, sturgeon, stingrays; and near its mouth, oys-
ters, crabs, and shrimps, sharks and porpoises,
which will doubtless continue.... Its shores,
being generally shoal... afford a fine asylum to
the young fry against their devouring enemies.Source: William Stork, A Description of East-Florida, with
a Journal, Kept by John Bartram of Philadelphia, Botanist
to His Majesty for the Floridas; upon a Journey from St.
Augustines up the River St. John, as Far as the Lakes, 4th
ed. (London: Faden & Jefferys, 1774), p. 34.The colonists brought this view of wet-
lands with them to the new world. In the United
States, until the latter part of the twentieth cen-
tury, marshes and other wetlands were generally
regarded as wastelands, evil places, and sources
of diseases such as malaria; they were places to
be avoided and, if technologically possible, to be
done away with.
John Bartram, the first American-born natu-
ralist, was a self-educated farmer. Although he
never traveled to Europe, he knew all the major
European naturalists of his day either person-
ally—because, like Peter Kalm [see Document
17], they came to visit his acclaimed garden at his
home outside Philadelphia—or through written
correspondence. Eager to have contact with the
greatest thinkers of his time, Bartram urged his
friend and fellow Philadelphian Ben Franklin to
organize a society of the “most ingenious and
curious men”^10 in America, and in 1692 Franklin
formed the American Philosophical Society, the
first scientific organization in America, to pro-
mote useful knowledge and encourage scientific
agriculture.
When Bartram was in his sixties, he was
appointed botanist to the king of England, and
in this capacity he surveyed the newly acquired
territory of Florida for the English Crown.
Although he remarked upon the richness of
the wetlands and recognized their function as a
sanctuary for young fish, he nevertheless was the
first of many people to recommend the reclama-
tion of Florida's wet-lands.
The pine-lands, as they are here called, con-
tain a variety of soil, according to their differ-
ent situations.... The pine-land, by the help of
Document 19: John Bartram on Reclaiming Florida’s Wetlands (1767)
Traditionally, the marsh was a wild, evil place that was feared and had to be subdued. It was thought to be the
home of murderous spirits and dangerous monsters such as Grendel, the huge moor-stalking subject of the
tenth-century Anglo-Saxon epic poem “Beowulf ” “who held the wasteland, fens, and marshes.”^9