AUDUBON'S ^NEID 321 



in his head, said the naturalist, was too great to be en- 

 dured, and the days that followed were days of oblivion 

 to him; but upon recuperation he took up his gun, his 

 notebook and his pencils, "and went forth to the woods 

 as gaily as if nothing had happened"; after a lapse of 

 three years his portfolio was again filled, and the earlier 

 work replaced by better. Audubon's drawings and 

 plates were also repeatedly ravaged by fires, but this 

 was at a much later day. 



While Audubon was engaged in teaching French, 

 music, or drawing, now to private pupils at Xatchez, 

 now in a school at Washington, Mississippi, nine miles 

 away, the summer of 1822 passed with the outlook as 

 ominous as ever. On August 23 he wrote: "My friend, 

 Joseph Mason, left me today, and we experienced great 

 pain at parting. I gave him paper and chalks to work 

 his way with, and the double barrelled-gun . . . which 

 I had purchased in Philadelphia in 1805." Mason, who, 

 for a year and nine months, was Audubon's aid and con- 

 stant companion, seems to have settled eventually as an 

 artist in Philadelphia, where we hear of him in 1824 

 and again in 1827. 19 



In the following December Audubon received a 

 fresh impetus towards the goal of his ambition by the 

 arrival at Natchez of a traveling portrait painter, named 

 John Stein, who gave him his first lessons in the use 

 of oils ; his initial attempt was the copy of an otter from 

 one of his own drawings. Audubon and Stein together 

 later painted a full-length portrait of Father Antonio 

 which was sent to Havana. Artists who have worked 

 long in one medium are not always successful in another, 

 but those who have seen some of Audubon's later and 

 better works in oil, such as his large canvas of the Wild 



19 See Audubon's letter to Sully, Vol. II, p. 69. 



