26 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



Jean Audubon came by his sailor's instincts and 

 fighting prowess naturally, for his father, Pierre Audu- 

 bon of Les Sables d'Olonne, was a seaman by trade. 

 Like his son he captained his own vessel, and for years 

 made long voyages between French ports in both the 

 old and the new worlds. Pierre Audubon, the paternal 

 grandfather of John James Audubon, and the first of 

 that name of whom we have found any record, 3 lived 

 at Les Sables d'Olonne, where with Marie Anne Martin, 

 his wife, he reared a considerable family in the first half 

 of the eighteenth century. 



Les Sables, at the time of which we speak, was a 

 small fishing and trading port on the Bay of Biscay, 

 fifty miles to the southwest of Nantes, but is now be- 

 come a city of over twenty thousand people. Lying on 

 the westerly verge of the Marais, or salt marshes and 

 lakes of La Vendee, the inhabitants of the district, and 

 more particularly of the Socage, or plantations, to the 

 north and northeast, were noted from an early day for 

 their conservatism, as shown in a firm adherence to 

 ancient law and custom, as well as for their unswerving 

 loyalty to the old nobility and to the clergy. Like their 

 Breton neighbors on the other side of the Loire, the 

 Vendeans were honest, industrious, and faithful to their 

 civic obligations ; they were also independent, resource- 

 ful, and knew no fear. When the neighboring city of 

 Nantes planted trees of liberty and displayed the Na- 

 tional colors in 1789, the Vendeans were stirred to indig- 

 nation and later to arms, while the Chouans on the right 

 bank of the river were quick to follow their example ; in 

 short, the rebels of La Vendee raised such a storm that 



3 Pierre Audubon's service in the merchant marine of France is un- 

 doubtedly recorded in the archives of the Department of Marine in 

 Paris, but all researches in that direction were suddenly halted by the 

 war. 



