198 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 



times he was so weary from drawing that " my 

 neck and shoulders, and most of all my fingers, 

 have ached from the fatigue. The fact is, I am 

 growing old too fast, alas ! I feel it, and yet work 

 I will, and may God grant me life to see the last 

 plate of my mammoth work finished. 



"Labrador is so grandly wild and desolate," he 

 said, "that I am charmed by its wonderful dreari- 

 ness. . . . And yet how beautiful it is now, when 

 your eye sees the wild bee, moving from one flower 

 to another in search of food, which doubtless is as 

 sweet to her as the essence of the orange and mag- 

 nolia is to her more favored sister in Louisiana. 

 The little ring-plover rearing its delicate and tender 

 young; the eider-duck swimming man-of-war-like 

 amid her floating brood, like the guardship of a 

 most valuable convoy ; the white-crowned bunting's 

 sonorous note reaching your ears ever and anon ; 

 the crowds of sea-birds in search of places wherein 

 to repose or to feed." 



On his return from Labrador, he went to Phila. 

 delphia, Avhere he was arrested for one of his old 

 partnership debts, and would have been taken to 

 prison except for a friend who kindly offered bail. 

 From here he went to the house of an old friend, 

 Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, S. C., whose 

 two daughters subsequently married the two sons 

 of Audubon, Victor and John. He returned to 

 London, and in 1834 and 1835 published the sec- 

 ond and third volumes of the " Ornithological 

 Biography." . 



