AUDUBON THE HUNTER-NATUKALIST. 95 



detected at once the sympathy of our tastes ; be that as it 

 may, we were soon on good terms. 



Like all men who have lived much apart with nature, he 

 was not very talkative. His conversation was impulsive and 

 fragmentary: that, taken together with a mellow Gallic 

 idiom, rendered his style pleasingly titilating to a curious 

 listener, as I was eager to get at his stores of knowledge, and 

 compare my own diffuse but extended observation with his 

 profound accuracy. 



The hours of that protracted journey glided by as in a 

 dream. I was forever at his side, catching with a delighted 

 eagerness at those characteristic scraps that fell from his 

 lips. 



I was anxious to obtain an accurate insight into the man 

 the individual. I found rather more of the man of the world 

 about him, than I was inclined to expect, though every inch 

 of him was symmetrical with his character of naturalist, and 

 many inches are there in that, growing through tall cubits 

 into the Titanic girth. 



He had several new and curious animals along with him, 

 which he had taken in those distant wilds where I had myself 

 seen them in their freedom, and now they looked like old 

 acquaintances to me ; and I soon got up an intimacy with the 

 swift Fox, the snarling Badger and the Rocky Mountain 

 Deer. He exhibited to me some of the original drawings of 

 the splendid work on the Zoology of the continent, which his 

 sons are now engaged in bringing out. I recognized in them 

 the miraculous pencil of the "Birds of America." But I 

 observed several personal traits that interested me very much. 



The confinement we were subjected to on board the canal 

 boat, was very tiresome to his habits of freedom. We used 

 to get ashore and walk for hours along the tow-path ahead 

 of the boat ; and I observed, with astonishment, that, though 

 over sixty, he could walk me down with ease. 



Now, I was something of a walker, and was not very far 



