Sightseers and Scholars: Scientific Travellers in the Golden Age of Natural History

Anthony MacKenzie is an associate professor of history at St. Francis
Xavier University.

Between 1750 and 1890, when much of the land was still unplundered
wilderness, nine inquisitive naturalists traveled in the Americas.
Stephen Bown tells the stories of these intrepid wanderers, who braved
poisonous serpents, roaring rapids, hunger, thirst, and disease in order
to sketch, collect, and write up the plant, animal, and insect life they
observed.

Quaker William Bartram saw all nature as “the influence of the
manifestation of God.” Atheist John Wesley Powell pioneered the
concept of public control of natural resources in the American West.
German aristocrat Prince Maximilian was intrigued by the customs and
lifestyles of native peoples who dwelt in Brazil and along the Missouri
River—but he and his men barely survived an unusually harsh winter on
the Great Plains.

On the Pacific Coast, Scottish botanist David Douglas was plagued by
extreme hunger and torrential rainstorms, and attacked by grizzly bears,
rats, ants, and fleas. On the coast of Hudson Bay, John Richardson
survived on a diet of whitefish and lichens after being forced to shoot
a member of the expedition who had turned cannibal. On the Amazon, Henry
Walter Bates encountered monstrous bird-eating spiders.

These colorful stories are splendidly recounted by Bown. The text
contains a few minor errors (e.g., Bartram’s love of adventure began
in 1854, not 1754), and the author was not well served by the
bookbinders (my copy is coming apart already!). All in all, though, this
is a fine book that should be read by anyone who wishes to know what the
American continents were like before easy living, profits, and
industrial technology became our gods.