32 Audubon's Western Journal 



there were any profits, these were to be divided in 

 a certain ratio. My father's contract was signed 

 January 31, 1849, and the fact that he was going 

 induced many of his personal friends and acquaint- 

 ances to join also. Almost all the men employed 

 at Minniesland went with "Mr. John." To the 

 daughter of one of these, Mrs. Alice Walsh Tone, 

 I am much indebted for help in names and dates. 



The journey across the continent in 1849 with 

 no regular means of communication with home and 

 friends, through a country virtually unknown, and 

 when Indians were still numerous; without cities 

 to enable travelers to get fresh supplies of food and 

 clothing, and with no very definite knowledge of 

 the road, was a serious matter under the best of 

 conditions and on the best route. What it was 

 with men who, with few exceptions, knew nothing 

 of the life before them, who were impoverished by 

 robbery, discouraged by death and disease and 

 deserted by their leader, upon a route of which 

 my father never approved, may be best learned 

 from his "Journal." The journey was a terrible 

 disappointment to him, as he says: "my arsenic 

 is broadcast on the barren clay soil of Mexico, the 

 paper in which to preserve plants was used for 

 gun-wadding, and, though I clung to them to the 

 last, my paints and canvases were left on the Gila 

 desert of awful memories." 



In July, 1850, he sailed for home, which he 



