96 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



a friend, suddenly nipped his plans in the bud ; he was 

 ordered, he said, aboard a pontoon, then lying in port, 

 and there was obliged to remain until his father, who 

 was absent at the time, finally released him, "not without 

 a severe reprimand." The following record, written 

 long after, is reminiscent of this period: "This day 

 twenty-one years since I was at Rochefort in France. 

 I spent most of the day at copying letters of my father 

 to the Minister of the Navy. . . . What has happened 

 to me since would fill a volume. . . . This day, January 

 first, 1821, I am on a keel boat going down to New 

 Orleans, the poorest man on it." 



Audubon's stay at Rochefort, the date of which is 

 no doubt correctly given in the journal just quoted, was 

 lestined to be short. After a year he returned to Nantes, 

 and later to "La Gerbetiere," where as before he spent 

 all of his leisure in roaming the fields and looking for 

 birds, their nests, their eggs and their young. At about 

 this time, when fifteen years of age, Audubon began 

 to make a collection of his original drawings of French 

 birds, which was greatly extended in 1805 and 1806. 



He has recorded that at the behest of his foster moth- 

 er, who was an ardent Catholic, he was confirmed in that 

 Church when "within a few months of being seventeen 

 years old"; he was surprised and indifferent, but "took 

 to the catechism, studied it and other matters pertaining 

 to the ceremony, and all was performed to her liking." 

 Since no record of this act has been found, it is probable 

 that the ceremony in question was confused with that 

 of his baptism, which, as we have noticed, occurred on 

 October 23, 1800, six months before he attained his 

 sixteenth birthday. 



After having seen something of the character of Au- 

 dubon's early training in France, it will not be surpris- 



