72 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



tions, having shipped on a fishing vessel at the age of twelve and 

 later commanded trading vessels until entering the service of his 

 country. He prospered, too, and finally became possessed of es- 

 tates in France and Santo Domingo, besides a farm in Pennsyl- 

 vania. On one of his excursions from his Santo Domingo estates 

 to Louisiana, then a French territory, the elder Audubon married 

 a lady of Spanish descent who became the mother of the ornitholo- 

 gist. Returning to Santo Domingo soon after his birth, the mother 

 perished in the negro uprising on the island while the father and 

 infant son escaped and made their way back to France. In a few 

 years the father was married again to Anne Moynette. 



Under the care of his stepmother young Audubon seems to 

 have enjoyed every pleasure that youth could wish; she "was 

 desirous," he writes, "that I should be brought up to live and die 

 like a gentleman, thinking that fine clothes and filled pockets 

 were the only requisites needful to attain this end. She therefore 

 completely spoiled me, hid my faults, boasted to every one of my 

 youthful merits and more than all frequently said in my presence 

 that I was the handsomest boy in France. All my wishes and idle 

 notions were at once gratified so far as actually to give me carte 

 blanche at all the confectionary shops in the town and also of the 

 village of Coneron when during the summer we lived, as it were, in 

 the country." 



Audubon's father having himself suffered from lack of educa- 

 tional advantages realized the importance of their cultivation on 

 the part of his son whom he destined for the navy. School, how- 

 ever, had no attractions for the boy. He says: "I studied drawing, 

 geography, mathematics, fencing, etc., as well as music for which 

 I had considerable talent. I had a good fencing master and a 

 first rate teacher of the violin, mathematics was hard dull work, 

 I thought; geography pleased me more. . . . My mother suffered 

 me to do much as I pleased and it was not to be wondered at that 

 instead of applying closely to my studies I preferred associating 

 with boys of my own age and disposition who were more fond of 

 going in search of birds* nests, fishing, or shooting, than of better 

 studies." 



