Return to Louisville, py 



My son Victor I managed to get into the counting-house 

 of a friend, and I engaged to paint the interior of a steam- 

 er. I was advised to make a painting of the falls of the 

 Ohio, and commenced the work. 



" November 9. Busy at work, when the weather per- 

 mitted, and resolved to paint one hundred views of Ameri- 

 can scenery. I shall not be surprised to find myself seat- 

 ed at the foot of Niagara." 



While painting he mainly resided at Shipping Port, a 

 little village near Louisville. In his journey between 

 Green River and Louisville, he took conveyance in a cart, 

 the owner agreeing to drive the distance. In doing so, 

 the driver missed his route, and in a storm went far off 

 the way. The horses instinctively led the way to a log 

 hut, inhabited by a newly-married pair, who did their ut- 

 most to show befitting hospitality. In the midst of a hur- 

 ricane the host rode off to his father's, some miles dis- 

 tant, for a keg of cider ; the Wife baked bread and roasted 

 fowls, and finally determined to sleep on the floor, so that 

 the strangers might have the comfort of a bed. 



Of such hospitality Audubon speaks highly, and seems 

 to lament its decadence among residents in the more civ- 

 ilized states of the Union. Some notes upon the effects 

 of the floods which swell American rivers into inland seas 

 are also contained in the journal of his residence at Lou- 

 isville. Writing of the devastation created by overflows 

 of the Mississippi, he remarks : — 



" The river rises until its banks are flooded and the 

 levees overflown. It then sweeps inland, over swamps, 

 prairie, and forest, until the country is a turbid ocean, 

 checkered by masses and strips of the forest, through 

 which the flood rolls lazily down cypress-shadowed 

 glades under the gloomy pines, and into unexplored re- 

 cesses, where the trailing vine and umbrageous foliage 

 dim the light of the noonday sun. In islets left amid the 

 5 



