260 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



loser. Arrested and sent to the Louisville jail for debt, 

 he was able to obtain release only by declaring himself 

 a bankrupt in court. "I paid all I could," 18 he said in 

 his journal of the following year, "and left Henderson 

 poor and miserable in thought. My intention to go to 

 France and see my mother and sister was frustrated, 

 and at last I resorted to my poor talents to maintain 

 you and your dear mother, who fortunately became easy 

 at her change of condition, and gave me a spirit such 

 as I really needed, to meet the surly looks and cold re- 

 ception of those who so shortly before were pleased to 

 call me their friend." "I parted," to revert to his later 

 account, "with every particle of property I held, to my 

 creditors, keeping only the clothes I wore on that day, 

 my original drawings, and my gun." Without a dollar 

 in his pocket he left Henderson and walked to Louisville 

 alone; "this," he said on reflection, "was the saddest of 

 all my journies, the only time in my life when the Wild 

 Turkeys that so often crossed my path, and the thou- 

 sands of lesser birds that enlivened the woods and the 

 prairies, all looked like enemies, and I turned my eyes 



aid of his children, he did not give up work until his eightieth year, seven 

 years before his death in 1874. See W. G. Bakewell, Bakewell-Page- 

 Campbell (Bibl. No. 200). 



18 Audubon was not so accurate when in his biographical sketch of 

 1835 he said: "Finally I paid every bill, and at last left Henderson 

 probably forever . . . ," for when at Charleston with Bachman in 1834, 

 one of his former creditors attempted to sue him for debt and apparently 

 carried his case to court. When Bachman asked for an explanation, 

 Audubon wrote from New York, April 5, 1834, as follows: "Respecting 

 the suit let me tell you . . . that I went to Gaol at Louisville after having 

 given up all to my creditors, and that I took the benefit of the act of 

 insolvency at the Louisville Court House, Kentucky, before Judge Fortunatus 

 Crosby & many witnesses, and that a copy of the record of that step 

 can easily be had from that court ... I wish friend Donkin to do all 

 he can to put a Conclusion stop to this matter, for it makes me sick 

 at heart." The lawyer here referred to was probably Judge Dunkin, 

 friend of Bachman and distinguished in his profession, who had a planta- 

 tion at Waccamaw, near Charleston, South Carolina (see Chapter XXVII, 

 Vol. II, p. 64. 



