A MEETING OF RIVALS 207 



the City of New Orleans." Continuing on his course 

 in search of new birds and subscribers, Wilson arrived 

 at Natchez on May 18, and, passing through Louisiana, 

 on the sixth day of June he entered New Orleans, where 

 his spirits were immediately raised by the accession of 

 sixty new names to his list. After six months of con- 

 tinuous effort, traveling now in a small boat, now on 

 the back of a horse, but frequently on foot, drenched by 

 torrents of rain or scorched by the unaccustomed heat, 

 often compelled to drink the poisonous water of cane 

 brakes in Mississippi (to which must be attributed an 

 attack of malarial fever, which he was able with diffi- 

 culty to throw off, but from which, in all probability, 

 he never fully recovered), he returned to New York 

 by sea, and on September 2, 1810, was again in Phila- 

 delphia. 



On this journey Wilson was a pioneer in much of 

 the territory which Audubon had hardly begun to ex- 

 plore, but which later became the scene of his wander- 

 ings and adventures for many a year. At Louisville the 

 two naturalists met, but they did not become good 

 friends; though devoted to the same objects, differences 

 in temperament might in any event have kept them 

 apart. Unfortunately, the feelings of jealousy which 

 were then aroused, or which were stirred up at a later 

 day, were fostered by some of Wilson's injudicious 

 friends to such an extent that from the moment Audu- 

 bon's work became known, and long before he had pub- 

 lished a line, they became as thorns in his path, and 

 they continued to vex him for thirty years. It is not 

 easy to reach a fair judgment in this matter now, and 

 it would be impossible to do so without a better under- 

 standing of the man who suddenly appeared upon Au- 

 dubon's horizon at Louisville in 1810 and then vanished. 



