278 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



was by no means thinking, at that time, of occupying 

 himself with natural history." 



In the interview as thus far recorded, Audubon was 

 clearly chaffing his new acquaintance, for not one of 

 the statements attributed to him was true, if we accept 

 the fact of his French extraction. Nolte, to be sure, 

 writes as a somewhat vain and garrulous man, and after 

 a lapse of forty-three years, but he professes to speak 

 the truth and there is no reason to suppose that his nar- 

 rative is pure invention. Nolte further informs us that 

 Audubon's father-in-law, Mr. Bakewell, ''formerly of 

 Philadelphia," was "then residing and owning mills at 

 Shippingport," which was not the case. To continue, 

 finding that Audubon, who was bound for Kentucky, 

 was a companionable man and devoted to art, a field 

 which he had cultivated himself, Nolte proposed that 

 they should travel together, and offered the naturalist 

 a berth on one of his flatboats. 



He thankfully accepted the invitation, and we left Pitts- 

 burgh in very cold weather, with the Monongahela and Ohio 

 rivers full of drifting ice, in the beginning of January, 1812. I 

 learned nothing further of his traveling plans until we reached 

 Limestone, a little place in the southwestern corner of the State 

 of Ohio. 6 There we had both our horses taken ashore, and I 

 resolved to go with him overland, at first to visit the capital, 

 Lexington, and from there to Louisville, where he expected to 

 find his wife and parents-in-law. . . . We had hardly finished 

 our breakfast at Limestone, when Audubon, all at once, sprang 

 to his feet, and exclaimed in French ; "Now I am going to lay 

 the foundation of my establishment." So saying, he took a 

 small packet of address cards from his pocket, and some nails 

 from his vest, and began to nail up one of the cards to the 

 door of the tavern, where we were taking our meal. 



o 



6 Limestone or, as it was later called, Maysville, was on the left bank 

 of the river, in Kentucky, and about a hundred miles east of Cincinnati. 



