Beltrami was a man of frank and sincere soul—an enemy of all flattery, and capable of unparalleled self denial. In proof of the latter, it is related that although he suspected that the cases of articles sent by him from America had been opened and plundered on their arrival at Florence, yet, to avoid the bitterness of certainty of such fact, he would never consent to their being examined during his lifetime, desiring that it should only be done by his heirs,—as so happened.
In the desire to be more generally read, he wrote everything in foreign languages, for which indeed he can hardly be blamed, having to print his works out of Italy. A complete list of his published writings is as follows:
1. Deux mots sur des promenades de Paris et Liverpool. Philad’a., 1823.
2. La Decouverte des Sources du Mississippi, &c. New Orleans, 1824. (Previously mentioned).
3. A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, &c. London, 1828. (Previously mentioned).
4. Le Mexique. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1830.
5. L’Italie et L’Europe. Paris, 1834.
6. Letter to the Secretary of the Historical Institute of France, (in French). Heidelberg, 1836. (Reprinted in the Bergamo city memorial).
The Indian curiosities and other articles brought by Beltrami to his native country from the region of our present Minnesota, together with his MS. papers &c., were presented by his heir, a nephew, shortly after his death, to the library of Bergamo, the municipality of which city caused them to be properly displayed in the vestibule of the building. Signore Rosa, his chief eulogist, says, in a private letter, that there is no genuine portrait of him extant;—the one by Professor Scuri being drawn from the engraving in the “Pilgrimage,” and from tradition.