FINAL REVERSES IN BUSINESS 259 



Returning home, Audubon was obliged to walk from 

 the mouth of the Ohio River to Shawnee Town. Upon 

 reaching Henderson he found that Mr. Bowen had an- 

 ticipated him. Acting upon advice, he was prepared for 

 an encounter with this man, who as his neighbors de- 

 clared, had sworn to kill him, and "whose violent and 

 ungovernable temper was only too well known." The 

 anticipated encounter ensued. Audubon, who was then 

 carrying his right hand in a sling from a recent injury 

 received in his mill, waited, as he said, until he had re- 

 ceived twelve severe blows from his assailant's bludgeon ; 

 then with his left hand he drew a dagger and struck in 

 his own defense. His assailant was felled to the ground, 

 but happily the wound inflicted was not mortal. Mr. 

 Bowen was carried away on a plank, and when the affair 

 was settled in the judiciary court, according to a Hen- 

 derson tradition, Judge Broadnax gravely left the 

 bench, approached the man who had been under charge 

 of assault, and said: "Mr. Audubon, you committed a 

 serious offense an exceedingly serious offense Sir in 

 failing to kill the d- - rascal." 16 "Thomas Bakewell," 

 added the naturalist, "who possessed more brains than I, 

 sold his town lots and removed to Cincinnati, where he 

 has made a large fortune, and I am glad of it. 17 



When the mill was finally closed and the company 

 dissolved in 1819, Audubon as usual was the heaviest 



"See Dixon L. Merritt (Bibl. No. 226a), "Audubon in Kentucky," 

 The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, vol. 10 (1909), p. 293. 



17 Thomas Bakewell later became a successful builder of steamboats, 

 first at Pittsburgh, and after 1824 at Cincinnati, where he was an im- 

 portant factor in the rising commerce of the Ohio Valley, and where 

 he left his mark on the history of that city. As a theoretical mechanic 

 in iron and wood he is said to have had no superior; his business was 

 nearly destroyed in the panic of 1837, and he never regained his financial 

 position. To his credit also it must be added that in 1860, at the age 

 of seventy-two, he began at the bottom of the ladder again by engaging 

 as a clerk with a paper company at Cincinnati, and, refusing the proffered 



