A MEETING OF RIVALS 205 



works &c. would make a noble picture. I began a very diligent 

 search in the place the day after my arrival for subscribers 

 and continued it for four days. I succeeded beyond expecta- 

 tion having got 19 names of the most wealthy and respectable 

 part of the inhabitants. The industry of the town is remark- 

 able; every body you see is busy; & as a proof of the pros- 

 perity of the place an eminent lawyer told me that there has not 

 been one suit instituted against a mercht. of the town these 

 three years ! The Glass Houses, of which there are 3, have 

 more demands for Glass than they are able to answer. Mr. 

 Bakewell the proprietor of the best, shewed .... yesterday a 

 Chandelier of his manufacture highly ornamented, . . . for 

 which he received 300 dollars. It would ornament the .... in 

 Philada. and is perfectly transparent. 



Eight days after he had reached Pittsburgh, Wilson 

 bravely launched a little skiff, which he christened the 

 Ornithologist, and began an arduous and perilous 

 journey to Cincinnati, Louisville and New Orleans, a 

 distance of two thousand miles. "In this lonesome man- 

 ner," he wrote, "with full leisure for observation and 

 reflection, exposed to hardships all day, and hard berths 

 all night, I persevered from the 24th of February to 

 Sunday evening, March 17th, when I moored my skiff 

 safely in Bear Grass Creek, at the rapids of the Ohio, 

 after a voyage of seven hundred and twenty miles." 



Cincinnati, then a town of five hundred houses, was 

 reached on the ninth of March ; while there Wilson made 

 the acquaintance of Dr. Daniel Drake, who was later 

 Audubon's friend, and examined a collection of Indian 

 relics which had been taken from a freshly opened 

 mound. He left Cincinnati convinced that its well-to- 

 do class must be a very thoughtful people, so many of 

 them, when approached for a subscription to his work, 

 having replied that they would "think about it." Upon 



