Review of Blackwater Chronicle

October 11, 2003.

Forthcoming in the Appalachian Journal 31, 3/4 (Spring/Summer 2004).

Note that the following is an uncorrected version of the text, posted as a sample book review for a composition class. -- KOD

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The Blackwater Chronicle: A Narrative of an Expedition into the Land of Canaan in Randolph County, [West] Virginia. 1853. By Philip Pendleton Kennedy; illustrated by David Hunter Strother ("Porte Crayon"). Edited and with a Preface by Timothy Sweet. Morgantown: West Virginia UP, 2002.

Paperback edition, July 2003; $18.00. ISBN 0-937058-66-1

A few hours' drive southeast of Morgantown, West Virginia, beneath Backbone Mountain, at the headwaters of the Cheat, runs the Blackwater river.

In 1851, the Blackwater drainage area was forest primeval, an island of unspoiled back-country, "... a howling wilderness of some twenty or thirty miles' compass, begirt on all sides by civilization, yet unexplored," as Philip Pendleton Kennedy writes, in his account of a sporting expedition to the area. At their first encampment on the Blackwater, the author and his companions count out the afternoon's fish catch: "some five hundred trout, varying in size from six to ten inches." Farther downstream, the anglers come across pools filled with native trout up to 13 inches long. At many points during the expedition, they catch fish as rapidly as they can bait their hooks. The Blackwater region that Kennedy writes about is cooled by great trees, including spruce and fir species that no longer grow in the region, as well as hemlock specimens 100 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. The ground beneath is strewn with ancient trunks, their slow decay adding to the thousand-year-old duff layer that forms an old-growth forest floor.

Flash forward fifty or so years or so, to around the turn of the twentieth century, at which time, the Blackwater drainage enters a cycle of environmental destruction typical for Appalachian forests during the period. First, the giant trees are hauled out by steam-powered cable skidders. The skidding creates large gulleys in the forest floor. Smaller trees and slash and other debris are left behind during the logging. The rich forest bed, no longer shaded, dries into flammable duff. The predictable results are fire and erosion. In 1914, the Blackwater Canyon burns for six months. Organic matter burns down to mineral soil, much of which washes out as silt into the surrounding streams. Some areas that formerly held old growth forest are now stripped down to bare rock.

To complete the devastation, underground mines in the area have caused pervasive "acid mine drainage." Coal mining was started in this region during the 1880s. By the 1960s, the lower Blackwater river had turned the bluish-green color of Tidy-Bowl[tm], indicating acidification. A recent reclamation project has mitigated the acid, and fish are returning. Yet the Blackwater ecosystem remains barren compared to what it was in 1851, at the time of the Blackwater Chronicle expedition.

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In 2002, West Virginia U Press reissued Philip Pendleton Kennedy's The Blackwater Chronicle; the paperback version appeared last July (2003). First published in 1853, this relatively short travel narrative (200 small pages--about 60,000 words) is written in a lighthearted, mock-heroic style. The book promised its antebellum readers an afternoon of good entertainment. For twenty-first century readers, the tale has an added quality of environmental elegy, with its detailed descriptions of an Appalachian ecosystem now largely vanished.

Modern readers may encounter an initial barrier to reading this book, however. The Chronicle is sprinkled with often obscure allusions--allusions to classical accounts of Caesar's Gaulic wars; to the works of Chaucer and of lesser-known English literary figures; to debates between the "Cockney School" and "Lake School" British poets of Kennedy's own time. As one early reviewer pointed out, the book is "well seasoned with the fruits of an extensive reading." Some of the allusions would probably have been lost even on the book's intended antebellum audience. The narrative likewise refers obliquely to political revolutions in Europe, and to American social and political figures and events of the time. Even the best-informed modern reader couldn't be expected to catch many of these references.

The best way for casual readers to enjoy this edition, then, is to read quickly, right past all those classical allusions, those boarding-school in-jokes about Greek names, those untranslated passages of Latin. Casual readers willing to look past the allusions will catch the energy of the tale, and will also enjoy the witty dialogue and interaction between the characters on the expedition. Though the book is from another era, modern readers familiar with back-country camping will recognize the situations and humor in this backwoods adventure.

The book includes a thirty page Preface, from editor Timothy Sweet, sketching out Kennedy's biography, placing The Blackwater Chronicle within competing literary traditions, and describing the environmental history of the Blackwater river drainage. Apart from the Preface, however, this edition has no critical apparatus--not even an index. In fact, the book is an odd hybrid between a critical edition and a facsimile edition. The "Bookman Old Style" typeface of this edition approximates the look of the first edition. And reproductions of the original illustrations are scattered throughout the text. These are delightful, wood-engraved prints, from sketches by David Hunter Strother--aka "Porte Crayon." Strother, Kennedy's cousin and a featured character in The Blackwater Chronicle, was, at the time of the expedition, on the verge of becoming one of America's best known writers and illustrators. (West Virginia UP has published a number of books about Strother's work and career, including one entitled David Hunter Strother, Cuthbert and Poesch 1997.)

All in all, the book looks good. The quality of the reproductions is about as good as you can get without special paper. The design pleases the eye. This edition isn't designed for reference. Rather it seems designed primarily to be a good read.

I won't be surprised if this book also finds its way onto the reading lists of a variety of college courses, now that it's out in paperback. As Sweet observes in his Preface, the book offers "an interesting glimpse into antebellum American literary culture." For those with the patience to read past all the allusions and in-jokes, the book is a relatively quick read. It provides invaluable insight into antebellum American ideas about nature and wilderness. And it tells of Appalachia's settlement and environmental history.

Kevin E. O'Donnell

Kevin E. O'Donnell is associate professor of English at East Tennessee State University and co-editor of Seekers of Scenery: American Travel Writing from Southern Appalachia, c.1840-1900, University of Tennessee Press, 2004.