CHAPTER XVIII 



EARLY "EPISODES" OF WESTERN LIFE 



Methods of composition — "A Wild Horse" — Henderson to Philadelphia in 

 1811 — Records of Audubon and Nolte, fellow travelers, compared — 

 The great earthquakes — The hurricane — The outlaw — Characterization 

 of Daniel Boone — Desperate plight on the prairie — Regulator law in 

 action — Frontier necessities — The ax married to the grindstone. 



Audubon's sketches of life and scenery in America, 

 which he designated as "Episodes," were interspersed 

 in his Biography of birds x to brighten the narrative 

 and beguile the reader. Extending to the number of 

 sixty, and dealing mainly with events between the years 

 1808 and 1834, they abound in tales of adventure and 

 graphic pictures of pioneer life which for their per- 

 sonal charm, local coloring, and human interest are 

 worthy of high praise. Some of these sketches have 

 been copied widely and some have been translated into 

 Audubon's native tongue; some have even found their 

 way into schoolbooks. While they have deservedly won 

 the naturalist many readers, not a few have subjected 

 him to harsh criticism on the score of too vivid coloring 

 or historical inaccuracy, a fault to which he was par- 

 ticularly prone. Whenever Audubon went directly to 

 nature to exercise his pencil or brush or wrote with his 

 subject before him, he was truth itself, but in writing 

 offhand and from memory of past events he was wont 



1 In the first three volumes only of the Ornithological Biography 

 (Bibl. No. 2), being omitted from the last two on account of the 

 exigencies of space. 



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