William Brewster (1851-1919) was one of America’s most influential and widely admired ornithologists. According to the account of his life provided by Marcus B. Simpson Jr., in American National Biography (1999), “Brewster’s most lasting contributions to American science were the key role he played in establishing the ... American Ornithologists’ Union [which] subsequently grew into the leading organization for scientific ornithology in the United States ... Brewster was placed in charge of the bird and mammal collections at the Boston Society of Natural History from 1879 to 1887. In 1885 he was appointed to a similar position at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.”

He also organized the initial group that later became the National Audubon Society.

For those interested in the human and natural history of the Smokies region, an excursion Brewster made in late May and early June 1885 through portions of Western North Carolina was especially noteworthy. From a scientific perspective, the trip was significant as it enabled Brewster to establish with certainty that more than 20 bird species (dark-eyed juncos, red-breasted nuthatches, brown creepers, winter wrens, golden-crowned kinglets, black-capped chickadees, ravens, etc.) thought to be “northern” breeders did in fact nest this far south in the higher elevations of our mountains. Brewster’s scientific observations were presented in The Auk (1886) under the title “An Ornithological Reconnaissance in Western North Carolina.”

The meticulous journal Brewster kept during this outing was edited by Simpson for publication in The North Carolina Historical Review (1980). Titled “William Brewster’s Exploration of the Southern Appalachian Mountains: The Journal of 1885,” this is an exceedingly interesting document — even for those with only a passing interest in birds — because of Brewster’s evocative descriptions of the region during the mid-1880s. Here are excerpts from the journal that might encourage you to take a closer look at the full text. I have substituted common names of the birds mentioned in place of Brewster’s scientific designations.

“Upon reaching the top of the plateau on which Highlands is situated we saw the first juncos. As we whirled rapidly along the smooth road through open park-like oak woods, tanagers, [rose-breasted] grosbeaks, and blue-headed vireos were singing on all sides ... Immediately after breakfast we started on horseback for Whitesides, a neighboring mountain of about 5000 ft. elevation. The road after leaving the village plunged down a steep slope and entered a superb rhododendron swamp where many of these shrubs attained a height of 25 ft. They grew in such tangled thickets that it was impossible for anything larger than a cat to get through them and their glossy evergreen foliage presented the appearance of a solid wall of dark green, semi-tropical in aspect. They formed the undergrowth of a forest of superb hemlocks, many of which were three or four feet in diameter and seventy or eighty feet high. The ground beneath was a spongy morass carpeted with green moss (sphagnum?) and rich in beautiful ferns. In this place the characteristic birds were veerys (hundreds, making the air ring with their music), wood thrushes, black-throated blue warblers (hundreds singing incessantly), chestnut-sided warblers, Canada warblers, a Louisiana waterthrush, dark-eyed juncos, a brown creeper, two red-breasted nuthatches, blackburnian warblers (singing everywhere in the tops of the hemlocks), and an occasional [blue] jay screaming overhead or a pileated woodpecker uttering its ringing call in the distance.

“Leaving Highlands at 9 A.M. we drove to East La Porte [several miles east of Cullowhee] which was reached about sunset. The road was an almost continual descent and for about six miles below Hamburg [the Cashiers area], steep, rocky, and dangerous, barely six inches from the brink of a precipice with the Tuckaseegee River roaring and rushing in white foam over the rapids hundreds of feet below. Throughout this stretch the scenery was simply superb, the picturesque river, the vertical-clad walls of the canon, and innumerable picturesque falls, rhododendron-clad banks, and grand old woods multiplying the attractions and giving a never ending variety to the landscape. The forests were the finest we have thus far seen. Many of the oaks and tulip trees exceeded five feet in diameter and with their straight column-like trunks and perfectly open ground beneath recalled the forests of the lower Wabash Valley of Illinois.”

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.