JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY 29 



before the treaty of peace was signed at Paris, February 

 10, 1763. Apart from her interests in the West Indies, 

 France was stripped at this time of all her vast pos- 

 sessions in America, save only the two little islands of 

 Saint Pierre and Miquelon. 



Whether Pierre Audubon shared the fate of his son 

 we are unable to say, for at this point he drops out 

 of our records and we do not hear of him again. It 

 is certain that he never made another voyage with 

 Jean, who returned to his native town with his passion 

 for the sea unabated, and at nineteen reentered the mer- 

 chant marine as a novice. His next voyage, on the ship 

 La Ccdlle, Captain Pigeon, was to execute a govern- 

 mental commission at the Island of Miquelon. Five 

 golden years of his youth had been spent in captivity; 

 if productive of nothing else they had given him a knowl- 

 edge of the English tongue, but they had also engen- 

 dered bitter hatred of the English race, a feeling which 

 his son confessed to have shared in his youthful days. 5 



The period from 1766 to 1768 was occupied in four 

 voyages to Newfoundland, probably in the interest of 

 the codfish trade, first as sailor before the mast in Le 

 Printemps, and then as lieutenant in a ship called also 

 La Marianne, with alternate sailings from, and to, La 

 Rochelle and Les Sables d'Olonne. On his third voyage 

 to Newfoundland, which was made in 1767, when he 

 was twenty-three years old, Jean Audubon ranked as 



5 This was recalled by the naturalist on March 5, 1827, when he 

 wrote: "As a lad I had a great aversion to anything English or Scotch, 

 and I remember when travelling with my father to Rochefort in January, 

 1800, I mentioned this to him. . . . How well I remember his reply. . . . 

 'Thy blood will cool in time, and thou wilt be surprised to see how gradually 

 prejudices are obliterated, and friendships acquired, towards those that 

 we at one time held in contempt. Thou hast not been in England; I have, 

 and it is a fine country.'" (See Maria R. Audubon, Audubon and His 

 Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, p. 216). 



