Travel description that significantly incorporates Western North Carolina’s natural history did not exist prior to William Bartram’s monumental Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida (Philadelphia: James & Johnson, 1791). Despite its brevity in regard to WNC’s terrain, Bartram’s Travels remains the highwater mark in regard to the region’s nature writing heritage to this day.

Nonetheless, WNC has since that time developed a rich heritage that deserves closer attention than has been the instance to date. One of the problems is that much of this literature is ephemeral in the sense that it’s buried away in obscure periodicals. And even when the material appeared in book form, those publications are often exceedingly difficult to locate.

One such instance is Henry E. Colton’s Mountain Scenery: The Scenery of the Mountains of Western North Carolina and Northwestern South Carolina (Raleigh: W.L. Pomeroy, and Philadelphia: Hayes & Zell, 1859), a truly rare book. But in this wondrous electronic age, the text and illustrations are nevertheless available to anyone owning a computer, a modem, and Internet access. If you qualify in this regard, go to http://docsouth.unc. edu/nc/colton/colton.html and you will be able to access a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries site that features a Documenting the American South collection of electronic editions to which Mountain Scenery was added in 2001. How about that?

Mountain Scenery is to my knowledge the first book containing significant amounts of nature and descriptive writing devoted almost entirely to the mountainous districts of WNC. Colton no doubt added “Northwestern South Carolina” to the title because he very reasonably wanted to sell copies in that state as well, but very little of the text describes anything in South Carolina.

The only biographical source for Colton that I have been able to locate is the sketch by George Stephens in the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, vol. 1 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1979). Therein, we are advised that Henry Elliott Colton (26 Dec. 1836 -8 Jan. 1892) was a naturalist, geologist and author who was born in Fayetteville. Colton’s career can be summarized as follows: editor of the weekly “Asheville Spectator” during the late 1850s; private in the 36th Regiment of North Carolina Troops and subsequently the Thirteenth Battalion, North Carolina Light Artillery during the Civil War; mining engineer (apparently in Tennessee); and state geologist of Tennessee. Identifying himself as “Henry E. Colton, Geologist and Inspector of Mines,” he was credited with “developing a vast amount of crude mineral wealth,” and he published several books on coal mining and steel ore. There was also a 16-page “Guide Book to the Scenery of Western North Carolina,” published in 1860, that I’ve never seen.

Colton contributed numerous articles to various Southern newspapers as well as to well-known magazines of the period like the “Southern Literary Messenger,” the “Southern Quarterly Review,” and “Appleton’s Journal.” Five articles on the French Broad River that were contributed to “Appleton’s” as part of that publication’s Picturesque America series (illustrated by Henry Fenn) are of special interest to WNC readers.

Mountain Scenery is handsomely illustrated with lithographs by “Herline & Hensel Lithographers,” a prestigious 19th century Philadelphia firm operated by Edward Herline and Daniel Hensel. In that century, lithographic images were rendered on stone and treated so that non-image areas would not retain ink. Lithographic images are soft and painterly. It is not known who prepared the sketches or paintings upon which the lithographs were based. The titles are indicative: “View of Asheville NC and the Mountains from the Beaux Catcher Knob;” “Hickory Nut Falls: Height of Uninterrupted Fall 350 Feet, Height of Precipice 900 Ft, This Stream in the Foreground is Broad River;” “Mitchell’s Falls;” and “View of the Pilot Mountain from Mr. Gillam’s.”

Colton’s chapter titles are similarly indicative of the areas described: “Asheville;” “The Hickory Nut Gap Route;” “The Routes from South Carolina — Saluda Gap and Jones’s Gap — Flat Rock — Hendersonville — Caesar’s Head — Whiteside Mountain, and Cashier’s Valley;” “The Route Via Wilkesborough — The Piedmont Springs of Burke — Hawk’s Bill and Table Rock;” “Linville Falls — Gingercake Rock — North Cove and the Cave;” “The Vicinity of Asheville — The White Sulphur Springs — The Million Springs — Pleasant Drives;” “The Black Mountain — The Mountain House — Journal of a Party;” “The Roan Mountain — The Great Bald Mountain;” “The French Broad River and the Warm Springs.”

Like many 19th century travelers Colton was, as you can see, inordinately interested in natural springs of any sort that might cure or ease one’s physical liabilities by immersion or ingestion. He was also interested in the income via tourism that such springs might, per chance, stimulate.

One of my favorite sections of Mountain Scenery is Colton’s description of his exploration of “a cave” (i.e., Linville Caverns). He doesn’t identify his companion, but it was perhaps Dave Franklin, a local guide:

“Stooping through a low passage, in which the coldest of water ran rippling and singing a merry song, which echoed back a thousand times from the dark dismal arched roof of the unmeasured space which stretched itself before, behind, and above us, we emerged into an immense passage, whose roof was far beyond the reach of the glare of our torches, except where the fantastic festoons of stalactites hang down within our touch. It looked like the arch of some grand old cathedral, yet it was too sublime, too perfect in all its beautiful proportions, to be anything of human, but a model which man might attempt to imitate. Passing along we would come to a huge figure, so horridly like the petrified skeleton of a human being, that as the fitful glimmering light cast a shade upon it, one would start back in horror. But a steadier shade exhibits it truly to our sight — nought but the working of nature ... But I missed my guide, and turning, I noticed him far above me, ascending a kind of natural stairs ... Soon with a bound or two he reached me, and announced the not very astounding fact that it was farther than he had ever been before, and that no one had ever been farther than he. His next was, ‘Shall we go on?,’ to which I replied, ‘To the end.’ And on we went, sometimes in water up to our knees, then beside the stream as it rippled on, now stooping or crawling through a narrow passage, again standing erect in a vast arched chamber, hung with the grandest of nature’s stony tapestry. Every little while we would turn aside and examine some finely adorned chamber, whose splendid carvings would so dazzle the eye that the last seemed always the most beautiful. At length my guide cried, ‘Look out for your light!’ and well I heard it, for just then my foot slipped, and I was in a pool of water about four feet deep, and about as near ice as I ever wish to see that element. As I was in, I kept on, holding a ledge of rock so as not to go any deeper, and soon the narrow passage opened into a good-sized chamber and the cave proper was at an end. There were several passages branching out, but all very small and difficult of access.

“Then I sat down on a sort of artificial seat which extended round the pool, which seemed to constitute the head of the stream of water we had been tracing, and thought for the first time of the peril I was in. But yet it did not seem to me as if there was anything to fear. There we were, under the centre of the Humpback Peak of the Blue Ridge, with at least 2500 feet of rock and earth above us, in a place where the foot of man had never before trod, with nothing but our own intelligence to tell us the road back, and how much that may have been bewildered, we know not. At length we turned our steps backward, and, after travelling rapidly for some time, reached the mouth of the cave. I suppose the length we went to could not have been less than a mile.

“The general formation of the country in which the cave lies is limestone, and there have been found some beautiful specimens of marble ... The scenery is well worth a visit; but I would not advise any one to attempt the cave, though I think it affords some food for scientific research.”

(To be continued next week.)

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