30 Audubon s Western Journal 



the animals, a splendid boatman and fisherman and 

 very valuable about the place. But civilization 

 was too wearisome for him, he left two or three 

 times and came back, but about 1852 returned to 

 Texas with Captain McCown.^ 



In 1846, the year following the Texan journey, 

 John Audubon with his wife and children went to 

 (Europe, in order that he might paint pictures — 

 still for the "Quadrupeds" — from some of the 

 specimens he could find only in the zoological 

 collections of London, Paris and Berlin, and he 

 was absent on this work more than a year and a 

 half. It was a period of most arduous work; his 

 letters home were very short, though he was an easy 

 and rapid writer. The reason for this brevity 

 was, as he often explains, that his arm and hand 

 were tired with the long days of steady painting; 

 particularly when the fur of the animals he was 

 delineating was of unusual length, for this was 

 before the days of "dabs and smudges" and minute- 

 ness of detail was insisted on both by the elder 

 Audubon and by the engravers. These were long 

 months to him as most of them were passed in 

 crowded cities, where he missed the forests and 

 rivers, his home and the free life to which he was 

 accustomed. Many times in the letters written 

 to those at Minniesland, he declares his intention 



^ John Porter McCown resigned his commission in 1861 

 to join the Confederate army, in which he served through the 

 war as a major general. — F. H. H. 



