William Byrd II, the proprietor of Westover plantation in Virginia, left an entertaining and varied body of factual reportage about colonial America during the age of Pope and Swift. Byrd's four travel narratives, as well as his diaries, letters, and miscellaneous writings, give a revealing picture of the Virginia planter's world. He was an urbane, inquisitive, eccentric man, who, with sly humor, surveyed life from beneath an upcurved eyebrow and a cumulonimbus wig. Byrd's eye moved over flora and fauna, landscapes and people. He wrote about Indians, gentry, women, slaves, medicine, natural history, folklore, diet, religion, and sex. He sailed back and forth between London coffeehouses and the New World and seemed equally at ease surveying the Dismal Swamp of Virginia or picking up a prostitute in St. James's Park in London. He chewed ginseng root to prolong his life. He ate almost nothing but milk and boiled...