PLANTER AND MERCHANT 37 



to Santo Domingo by way of the Ohio and the Mis- 

 sissippi. Symptoms of unrest were already prevalent 

 in the northern provinces of the island but had caused 

 no serious alarm in the south. Jean Audubon's aim 

 seems to have been to collect debts due him in the United 

 States and to leave the capital invested there. At all 

 events it was on this occasion that he purchased the farm 

 of "Mill Grove," near Philadelphia, the history of which 

 will be given a little later (see Chapter VII). He had 

 no intention, however, of living in Pennsylvania, for he 

 immediately leased this estate to its former owner and 

 hurried away. 



July 14, 1789, found the elder Audubon enlisted as 

 a soldier in the National Guards at Les Cayes. These 

 colonial troops, which were originally militia organiza- 

 tions modeled after similar bodies in France, were reor- 

 ganized at this time to meet any possible emergencies. 

 Affairs in the southern provinces of Santo Domingo 

 had followed, up to this moment, their normal course, 

 and Jean Audubon, who could have learned nothing of 

 what had transpired at home, decided to entrust his 

 various interests to the hands of agents and return to 

 France. This was probably in late August or early 

 September, 1789, as we know that he first returned to 

 the United States and visited Richmond, Virginia, at 

 the close of that year. 1 Strangely enough, on the twen- 

 tieth day of the former month the National Assembly at 

 Paris had voted the celebrated Declaration of Rights, 

 which was destined to upturn the whole social system 

 of Santo Domingo and to convert that island into a 

 purgatory of the direst anarchy, strife, and bloodshed 

 which the world had ever known, or at least remem- 

 bered ; but fully six weeks must have elapsed before news 



^ee letter to Dacosta, Vol. I, p. 121. 



