Byrd's Line: A Natural History

by Stephen Conrad Ausband

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081392135X
• ISBN13: 9780813921358
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

An easy, delightful read--and not a hint of leather or tweed

Dr. Ausband's elegant, easy, affable writing style (threaded with humor and just a hint of the bawdy) mirrors that of his subject, and reading this book is very much like listening in on a conversation between two men sharing their thoughts, observations, and tall tales about their adventures in a land they both love, while warming their hands around a steaming mug of coffee before an autumn campfire. The fact that they are separated by three centuries of "progress" is no barrier to their camaraderie, and because the book is so well written, the reader becomes a member of Byrd's expedition team, too, as Ausband does---without having to clean the mud off his or her boots, or cut through the brush in the Dismal Swamp. Almost incidentally, he or she also gets an education in botany, ornithology, and zoology along the imaginary line that separates Virginia from North Carolina, the descriptions of the animals, plants, and people Byrd encountered (and Ausband revisits) as colorful as the Carolina parakeet that once overran the area--and nowhere to be found is the cloying smell of leather elbow patches and tweed the one might expect such a book to exude. It's a skillful piece of work, written by a master storyteller, and will be of interest to anyone who is a student of Byrd of Westover, a resident of the geographic area, a fisherman or hunter or hiker, or a bibliophile unable to resist the lure of an exceptionally well-wrought book.