Kalm (1749)
Kalm, Pehr (1716-1779). Travels into North America [...]. Warrington, England: W. Eyres, 1770-1771.
Pehr Kalm was born in Sweden in 1716, the son of a Lutheran minister. He was admitted to Åbo University (Finland) in 1735 and then to Uppsala University (Sweden) in 1740. The following year Kalm became a student and friend of Carl von Linné, the famous naturalist. Under the latter's influence Kalm developed a profound interest in the application of botany to agricultural and industrial problems. In 1747 he was designated by the Swedish Academy of Sciences to travel to North America to collect seeds of plants that might "prove useful for feeding people or animals ... or else for dyeing, or for some other industrial, domestic or medical purpose." Kalm stayed in America, mainly in New England, from 1748 to 1751; from June to October 1749 he visited part of New France. After this voyage, Kalm taught at Åbo University until his death in 1779.
Kalm's travel journal appeared at first in Swedish in three volumes under the title En Resa til Norra America (Stockholm, 1753-1761). In the author's lifetime, En Resa appeared in two German translations (1754 and 1764), an English translation (1770-1771) and a Dutch translation (1772).
Given Kalm's first field of interest, his botanical descriptions obviously have pride of place in his work, but not the only place - far from it. He is interested in everything; nothing escapes him: a meticulous observer, Kalm informs his reader about zoological, geographical, geological, climatological and other scientific phenomena. In addition, Kalm is a genuine forerunner in that he pays much attention to the Euroamerican inhabitants of New England and New France, at a time when explorers and travellers are almost exclusively interested in the Indians of North America. Kalm describes many aspects of the way of life of Euroamericans in the middle of the eighteenth century, including: economic and political structures, religious and social institutions, mores, customs, fashions in dress, dietary habits and even phonetic variants in their speech.
En Resa is indisputably among the best works of travel literature ever published about North America.
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