JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY 25 



was Captain Jean Audubon, who was later to become 

 the father of America's pioneer woodsman, ornitholo- 

 gist and animal painter. 



By birth a Vendean, at the age of thirty-seven Jean 

 Audubon had plowed the seas of half the world, and 

 in the course of his checkered career, as sailor, soldier, 

 West Indian planter and merchant, had met enough 

 adventure to furnish the materials for a whole series of 

 dime novels. Short of stature, with auburn hair and a 

 fiery temper, he was then as stubborn and fearless an 

 opponent as one could meet on the high seas, and one 

 of the gamest fighting cocks of the French merchant 

 marine. How much Jean Audubon's son owed to his 

 French Creole mother will never be known, but to this 

 self-taught, thoroughly capable, and enterprising sailor 

 we can surely trace his restless activity, his versatile 

 mind and mercurial temper, as well as an inherent ca- 

 pacity for taking pains, which father and son possessed 

 to a marked degree. 



The true story of Jean Audubon's career has never 

 been told, but even at this late day it will be found an 

 interesting human document; and what is more to our 

 purpose, it throws into sharp outline much that has 

 hitherto remained obscure in the life of his remarkable 

 son. The first Audubon to leave any imprint, how- 

 ever faint, upon the history of his time, this honest, 

 matter-of-fact sailor, would have been the last to wish 

 to appear in the garb of fiction, and we shall base our 

 story solely upon the unimpeachable testimony of public 

 and private records, which researches in France had 

 happily brought to light before the beginning of the 

 war in 1914. 2 



2 For notice of these records of Jean Audubon and his family, see the 

 Preface, and for the most important documents, Appendix I. 



