EXPLORATIONS IN FLORIDA 5 



Abert, were Edward Everett, Levi Woodbury, Secre- 

 tary of the Navy, and Lewis McLane, Secretary of the 

 Treasury. He was particularly anxious to obtain ac- 

 commodation for his party aboard a government vessel, 

 but it was some time before a suitable one was available. 

 They left Washington about October 15, 1831, and went 

 by steamer to Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia, where 

 the Governor, John Floyd, whom Audubon had known 

 in his Kentucky days, gave him numerous letters of 

 introduction. At Charleston, their next stopping-place, 

 he had hardly begun work in the field when he was 

 sought out by the Rev. John Bachman, by inclination 

 a naturalist of the old school and by profession a Luther- 

 an minister, who at once took the whole party under 

 his hospitable roof, where they remained a month. Thus 

 began a life-long and almost ideal friendship between 

 these two men, so unlike in character, in temperament 

 and in training, which was quite as important to the 

 modest German- American divine as to the impulsive 

 Franco- American painter and student of birds. It was 

 Audubon's infectious enthusiasm which kindled to an 

 ardent flame that love of nature which was innate in 

 Bachman, and which eventually brought his name and 

 work to the attention of the scientific world. 



Audubon remained at Charleston with the Bachmans 

 until November 15, when the opportunity which they 

 had awaited came suddenly, and they sailed for St. Au- 

 gustine, Florida, on the government schooner Agnes. 

 On that day Bachman wrote to Mrs. Audubon, in com- 

 pliance "with a request of your kind and worthy hus- 

 band, who laid an injunction on me this morning": 3 



3 C. L. Bachman, John Bachman, D.D., LL.D., Ph.D. (Bibl. No. 191), 

 to which work I am indebted for numerous extracts from Bachman's 

 letters to Audubon and for various incidents relating to the different 

 members of both families. 



