DEBUT AS A NATURALIST 345 



beset by claimants for payment upon articles ordered 

 for the Western Museum five years before. Finding it 

 difficult at this time to replenish an empty purse, Audu- 

 bon felt that he must borrow fifteen dollars, but could 

 not make up his mind how to ask the favor until he had 

 several times walked past the house where he had once 

 been known. Nevertheless, he succeeded in obtaining 

 the necessary funds, took passage on a boat bound for 

 Louisville, and slept cheerfully that night on a pile of 

 shavings which he managed to scrape together on deck. 

 ''The spirit of contentment which I now feel," he wrote, 

 "is strange; it borders on the sublime; and, enthusiastic 

 or lunatic, as some of my relatives will have me, I am 

 glad to possess such a spirit"; later he added: "I dis- 

 cover that my friends think only of my apparel, and 

 those upon whom I have conferred acts of kindness 

 prefer to remind me of my errors." 



Louisville was reached on November 20, and a num- 

 ber of days were spent in visiting his eldest son, 

 Victor, who was then at Shippingport. 21 He finally 

 arrived at Bayou Sara in late November, 1824. The 

 captain of his vessel, which was bound for New Or- 

 leans, put him ashore at midnight, and he was left to 

 grope his way to the village on the hill. St. Francis- 

 ville, to his dismay, was nearly deserted, a scourge of 

 yellow fever having driven most of its inhabitants to 

 the pine woods. The postmaster, however, was able to 

 assure him that his wife and son were well, and Mr. 

 Niibling, a friendly German, whom he described as "a 



21 ( 



'Shipping Port," as the village below the rapids or falls of the 

 Ohio was then called, was joined to Louisville by the Louisville and Port- 

 land Canal, a channel two and one-half miles long, in 1830, two years 

 after the city received its charter. The "Louisville" or "Portland" cement, 

 a name now applied to the product of a considerable district, was first 

 manufactured at Shipping Port, in 1829, for the construction of this 

 canal. 



