In 1728, William Byrd, the wealthy, English-educated master of
Westover plantation, undertook a journey with a troop of
commissioners, surveyors, and woodsmen to determine the exact
boundary between North Carolina and Virginia. Byrd was not only an
indefatigable explorer but also an amateur naturalist and diarist
of considerable skill. He recorded the journey in two classics of
colonial literature-- "The History of the Dividing Line" and "The
Secret History of the Line"--which showcase in varying measure his
keen observations of natural phenomena, his erudition, his
predilection for exercise and sexual conquest, and his witty and
elegant prose.
William Byrd and Stephen Ausband are separated by almost three
hundred years, but they share a similar literary inclination
complemented by an amateur interest in nature. Like Byrd, Ausband
has tramped the dividing line and returned with a lively,
informative book.
"Byrd's Line" is Ausband's dialogue with Byrd across the years.
It still requires a hike or a four-wheel-drive vehicle to reach the
remote beach where Byrd began his survey. As Ausband slogs through
the Great Dismal Swamp and the thickets and forests that Byrd wrote
about, he interlaces his own adventure with quotations from Byrd.
These range from descriptions of chestnut trees and passenger
pigeons, both gone now, to accounts of the local inhabitants, both
native and European.
Byrd often mused about what would happen to the land in the
future. While some of the dividing line still feels like
wilderness, it is crisscrossed today by bridges and roads, its
forests felled and paved over for parking lots and subdivisions,
its waters diverted or drained. Ausband's story, therefore, is a
natural history of a changed region. It is also an accessible
introduction to the mind and words of an extraordinary early
American.
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