"EPISODES" OF WESTERN LIFE 277 



burgh to purchase two flatboats, for in addition to their 

 horses they had planned to carry 400 barrels of flour, 

 from the sale of which in the South they expected to 

 defray the expenses of their journey. Having pur- 

 chased a fine horse in Philadelphia, Nolte left that city 

 in December, and with saddle-bags strapped to his 

 horse's back, rode on "entirely alone." He crossed the 

 highest point of the Alleghany ridge at ten o'clock of a 

 winter's morning and later in the same day reached a 

 small inn "close by the Falls of the Juniata River." 

 "The landlady," to quote his narrative, "showed me into 

 a room, and said, I perhaps would not mind taking my 

 meal with a strange gentleman, who was already 

 there." This stranger, who immediately struck him as 

 "an odd fish," ''was sitting at a table, before the fire, 

 with a Madras handkerchief wound around his head, 

 exactly in the style of the French mariners, or laborers, 

 in a seaport town." In the course of the conversation 

 which then ensued he declared that he was an English- 

 man, but Nolte was the last person to be deceived on a 

 question of nationality and remarked at once that his 

 speech betrayed him. "He showed himself," to quote 

 our senior traveler again, "to be an original throughout, 

 but at last admitted that he was a Frenchman by birth, 

 and a native of La Rochelle. However, he had come 

 in his early youth to Louisiana, had grown up in the sea- 

 service, and had gradually become a thorough Ameri- 

 can." When asked how this account squared with his 

 earlier statement, said Nolte, "he found it convenient 

 to reply in the French language: 'when all is said and 

 done, I am somewhat cosmopolitan; I belong to every 

 country.' This man," to conclude, "who afterwards 

 won for himself so great a name in natural history, par- 

 ticularly in ornithology, was Audubon, who, however, 



