FIRST VENTURES IN BUSINESS 167 



The numerous references which these letters con- 

 tain regarding the disposition of the "Mill Grove" farm 

 may well puzzle the reader who has followed the story 

 to this point; we must therefore attempt to unravel the 

 tangled threads of this intricate affair. In the spring 

 of 1807 Audubon, who was then anxious to start a 

 "retail shop," complained that the land, which could not 

 be sold to advantage, kept them short of capital and 

 prevented them from dealing on so large a scale as 

 they could wish. On the 24th of April he wrote that 

 three weeks before he had gone to "Mill Grove" and 

 closed an agreement for renting the property (evidently 

 referring to the farm as distinct from the mine) for a 

 year, being unable to do better, and that Ferdinand was 

 then in Philadelphia trying to settle his father's accounts 

 with Dacosta, who did not readily forget his trickster's 

 role. In Audubon's letter of the same day, inclosed in 

 the same packet with the request that it be delivered 

 to his father, there is a similar reference, with the note 

 that Ferdinand, who had charge of the settlement, had 

 .chosen Mr. Huron as arbitrator, but that he would not 

 agree unless honest Miers Fisher had a part in it. 

 Finally, as late as the 19th of July of that year he 

 wrote to Rozier, the elder, that they were hoping to sell 

 "Mill Grove" in the autumn, but would do so only at a 

 good profit; yet at this time the property had been 

 out of their possession, technically at least, for nearly 

 a year. 



Still more curious is this statement in Audubon's 

 autobiography, 22 relating to the year 1813; "I bought a 

 wild horse, and on its back travelled over Tennessee and 

 a portion of Georgia, and so round till I finally reached 



22 Maria R. Audubon, Audubon and his Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, 

 p. 32. 



