"EPISODES" OF WESTERN LIFE 279 



Later they rode on together as far as Lexington, where 

 they appear to have parted company. 



The discrepancies between these accounts could 

 hardly be greater, and they serve to illustrate the lib- 

 erties which Audubon sometimes took with facts in com- 

 posing his "Episodes." The travelers met, not on horse- 

 back, but at the supper table of a country inn; Nolte 

 was then alone and had but one horse, while the greater 

 part of the return journey was made by flatboat with 

 Audubon as his guest ; corn blades, pumpkins and trout 

 suggest any other season than midwinter, with heavy 

 snows on the mountains and rivers choked with ice. 

 Audubon in this instance, as already explained, com- 

 bined the incidents of two different journeys and col- 

 ored the narrative to suit his fancy. There was no ap- 

 parent motive to mislead the reader, and one of his 

 readers he must have known would probably be Vincent 

 Nolte, though he was not a subscriber to The Birds of 

 America; Nolte did read the story, and was pleased with 

 the "flattering acknowledgment of the little service" 

 that he was able to render Audubon at that time as well 

 as later in his career. 



Both travelers felt the great earthquakes while mak- 

 ing this journey, but probably not until they had parted 

 company at Lexington. Audubon has given a vivid 

 account of this experience in a characteristic sketch, but 

 as usual there are no dates. 7 He was overtaken, as he 

 said, while "traveling through the Barrens of Kentucky 

 ... in the month of November," when he thought his 

 terrified "horse was about to die, and would have sprung 

 from his back had a minute more elapsed, but at that 

 instant all the shrubs and trees began to move from 

 their very roots; the ground rose and fell in successive 



7 "The Earthquake," Ornithological Biography, vol. i, p. 239. 



