HARD TIMES AT MONTICELLO - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 122

dition of Arcadian imagery to call upon in evoking the hospitability of the American envir-
onment to human settlement. Virginia itself, in his own estimation, rated as the “Eden of the
U.S.,” while his wide reading in American travel literature taught him to think of the western
United States—to the Mississippi and beyond—as a veritable cornucopia: “Here is health and
joy, peace and plenty … the soil [is] excellent, the climate healthy and agreeable, and the
winters moderate and short … no country in this quarter, if any in the world, is capable of
larger or richer improvement than this.” 21 Jefferson implicitly trusted such accounts because
they underwrote his fondest hopes for a greater agrarian-based republic. The prosperity of
the new nation and its unique personal freedoms depended, in Jefferson's imperial vision, on
a near-infinite availability of sun-blessed fertile land to the West.
With Jefferson's attack on Buffon in Notes on the State of Virginia , the two contrary
branches of colonial-era European writing on the Americas—one evoking Eden, the other a
frozen tundra—converged in open conflict. When Notes appeared in print in 1785, Jefferson
immediately sent a signed copy to the Comte de Buffon and arranged to visit his aged ad-
versary at his provincial manor in Montbard to take up the debate in person. How fitting
that these great armchair naturalists of the late eighteenth century should meet over dinner
in a formal baroque dining room, eating off the finest imported chinaware, surrounded by
leather-bound volumes of the Count's collected works. Undistracted by the real world, the
two gentleman scientists were free to expound on their pet theories: that the Earth was made
of glass (Buffon) or that gigantic mammoths and sloths roamed the American West under the
loom of erupting volcanoes (Jefferson). But when it came to the matter of the undeclared war
between them—on American climate and fauna—the septuagenarian Buffon proved an elu-
sive opponent.
Jefferson had arrived at the Count's door carrying a large American panther skin, which
Buffon once “had confounded with a cougar.” Buffon instantly promised to correct his mis-
take in a new edition. This aristocratic concession with regard to detail merely laid the
ground, however, for Buffon's denial of Jefferson on principle. He listened politely as his
guest enumerated the pro-American arguments of Notes on the State of Virginia and made his
passionate case for a benevolent New World climate. But Buffon did not deign to debate the
young American ambassador. Instead, he merely reached for the latest hefty volume of his
Histoire Naturelle and said, smilingly, “When Mr. Jefferson shall have read this, he will be per-
fectly satisfied that I am right.” 22 For Buffon, the question of who had the larger genitals was
never far from the surface.
No detailed account exists of the ensuing conversation, and Buffon died before their fas-
cinating dialogue could be resumed. But we can well imagine their resorting to the usual
tactic of ambitious men with sharply differing opinions who meet under conditions of po-
liteness: they sought out subjects on which they could agree. Here, one strand of Buffonian
climate theory overlapped appealingly with Jefferson's own: namely, that by transforming
the natural landscape through agriculture, American settlers possessed the God-given power
to radically improve their climate. In the utopian promise of climate engineering thus lay an
“escape clause” for American patriots in the age of Buffon. One might respectfully disagree
with one's continental friends on the natural advantages of the New World environment as it
was “discovered” by Europeans because, once settled , the success of the American experiment
lay in the hands of the colonists themselves. By deforesting and draining the land, by planting