Some of the most interesting books published in the 19th century about Western North Carolina were compiled by authors who traveled here specifically to write about the region’s scenery, natural history and lifestyles. Then they went home and never returned again.

One such volume is A World of Green Hills: Observations of Nature and Human Nature in the Blue Ridge (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898) by Bradford Torrey. Torrey (1843-1912) is now primarily remembered as a nature essayist and observer of bird life. He did, however, as Felton Gibbons and Deborah Storm note in Neighbors to the Birds: A History of Birdwatching in America (NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988), “have a many-sided career, first in missionary work, then as an editor of ‘Youth’s Companion’ and of Thoreau’s journals, and as a prolific essayist.” Those who know the hymn “Not So In Haste, My Heart” will probably not remember that it was composed by Bradford Torrey.

As Gibbons and Storm also note, Torrey “traveled widely within the United States, to North Carolina, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Florida, and finally to California, where he retired (and passed away) in Santa Barbara. Most of these journeys had reverberations in his books.”

A World of Green Hills is divided into two parts, equally devoted to travels in North Carolina and Virginia (Pulaski and Natural Bridge). The North Carolina portion of his journey was primarily in the general area of Cashiers and Highlands. Torrey had been inspired by a prior ornithological journey to the region by a close friend. Marcus Simpson notes in Birds of the Blue Ridge Mountains (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1992) that “The Highlands Plateau achieved a lasting place in the history of Appalachian natural sciences when Harvard professor William Brewster explored the region during his whirlwind tour of the North Carolina mountains in late May 1885. Brewster discovered many birds whose previously known breeding ranges were far to the north.

“Brewster’s findings significantly changed the concepts of bird distribution in eastern North America, for here, practically at the Georgia state line, were a host of ‘northern’ birds (i.e., rose-breasted grosbeaks, Blackburnian and black-throated blue warblers, olive-sided flycatchers, etc.) ....”

In addition, Brewster collected specimens at Highlands that served as the basis for his descriptions of the southern Appalachian subspecies of solitary vireo and dark-eyed junco. Following up on Brewster’s lead, Torrey took another look at the habitat and was no doubt hoping to find additional “northern” breeders or a new subspecies. But he didn’t. Both Brewster and Torrey missed out on finding “northern” breeders like least flycatchers and golden-crowned kinglets. And both of them failed to access the Chattooga River drainage system just below Horse Cove, where they would have found nesting Swainson’s warblers, which were not discovered until the middle of the 20th century. Those interested in the natural and human history of the Blue Ridge should by all means locate a copy of this A World of Green Hills (probably via interlibrary loan as it is out-of-print).

The most interesting bird sighting made by Torrey in what was a phalarope at Stewart’s Pond. He described the bird as having a “white lower cheek (or should I call it the side of the upper neck?), the black stripe through and behind the eye, the white line just over the eye, the light-colored crown, the rich reddish brown of the nape and the sides of the neck, the white or gray-white under parts, the plain (unbarred) wings, and so on.” Any modern birder will be amused that Torrey “was possessed by a recollection, or half recollection, that the marginal membrane of the toes was a prime mark of distinction (as indeed it is, though the only manual I had brought with me turned out not to mention the point); but while for much of the time the bird’s feet were visible, it never for so much as a second held them still, and as the water was none too clear and the bottom muddy, it was impossible for me to see how the the toes were webbed, or even to be certain that they were webbed at all.”

Oh my. How many of you birders have found yourselves in similar situations? In time, Torrey correctly identified the bird as a Wilson’s phalarope. Had he had The Sibley Guide to Birds in hand (not published until more than a century later in 2000), he would turned to page 194 and determined that the Wilson’s phalarope in question was an adult male in breeding plumage. That bird had clearly made a wrong turn somewhere. Wilson’s phalaropes breed in the northwestern United States into Canada.
Those readers who are not ornithologically inclined will nevertheless be interested in Torrey’s Human Nature observations (as he labels them) in the Cashiers-Highlands area. He took a train from Boston south to Seneca, South Carolina, and then hired a horse-drawn “buggy” as transportation to Walhalla, South Carolina. From there, via a section of Georgia, he rode in “a heavy three-seated mountain wagon, locally known as a ‘hack,’ drawn by two horses,” to Highlands, which was “said to be thirty-two miles distant, — so much I knew; but the figures had given me little idea of the length of the journey .... In short, to accomplish our ascent of twenty-eight hundred feet we were out for a day’s ride in three states and over four mountains.” Torrey observed that “If the religious condition of a community is to be estimated by the number of its meetinghouses, let me say in passing, then High-lands ought to be a very suburb of the New Jerusalem. Its population cannot be more than three or four hundred, but its churches are legion. ‘Yes,’ said a sprightly young lady, to whom the subject was mentioned, ‘if there were only one or two more, we might all have one apiece.’”

One day Torrey observed a woman “riding into town when her horse suddenly stopped and shied. In the road, directly before her, a snake was coiled, rattling in defiance. The woman dismounted, hitched the frightened horse to a sapling, cut a switch, killed the snake, threw it out of the road, remounted, and went on about her business.” He concluded that “It is one advantage of life in wild surroundings that it encourages self-reliance.” We’ll put aside the larger question as to whether rattlesnakes are not equally entitled to a place in the wild as horseback riders.

Highlands has always been a place where botanical interests are taken seriously. I sometimes present evening wildflower slide programs there that would perhaps draw 20 people elsewhere. In Highlands, 150 folks might turn out to see wildflower slides.

“In truth, however, botany and Latin names might almost be said to be in the air in Highlands,” Torrey discovered in 1896. “A villager met me in the street one day, and almost before I knew it we were discussing the specific identity of the small yellow lady’s-slippers, — whether there were two species, or, as my new acquaintance believed, only one, in the woods round about. At another time, having called at a very pretty unpainted cottage, — all the prettier for the natural color of the weathered shingles, — I remarked to the lady of the house upon the beauty of “Azalea vaseyi,” (now classified as “Rhododendron vaseyi” and widely known as pink-shell azalea) which I had noticed in several dooryards, and which was said to have been transplanted from the woods. I did not understand why it was, I told her, but I couldn’t find it described in Chapman’s Flora. ‘Oh, it is there, I am sure it is,’ she answered; and going into the next room she brought out a copy of the manual, turned to the page, and showed me the name. It was in the supplement, where in my haste I had overlooked it. I wonder how often, in a New England country village, a stranger could happen into a house, painted or unpainted, and by any chance find the mistress of it prepared to set him right on a question of local botany?”

One day just west of Highlands, Torrey encountered two men who had walked up from Franklin to “work on the new road up at Stooly,” they informed him. By this time, he knew that “Stooly” was local slang for Satulah Mountain, upon the flank of which Highlands is located. “One of the men carried a hoe, and one a small tin clock,” Torrey observed. “They had no other baggage, I think. When a man works on a road, he needs a hoe to work with, and a timepiece to tell him when to begin and when to leave off. So I thought to myself; but I am bound to add that these workmen seemed to be going about their task as if it were a privilege. It eases labor to feel that one is doing a good job. That makes a difference, so we used to be told, by Carlyle or someone else, between an artist and an artisan; and I see no reason why such encouraging distinctions should not be applied to road-menders as well ....”
There’s a lot more in A World of Green Hills in the way of “Nature and Human Nature” observations than I have room for here. If it sounds like your cup of tea, rustle up a copy and have yourself a good read.

(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., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com

 

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