158 AUDUBON THE NATURALIST. 



CHAPTER XII. 



WITH untiring zeal Audubon continued to 

 work out his great plan — a source to him 

 of perpetual anxiety in alternating hopes and 

 fears. The unfaltering enterprise and powers 

 of endurance, both mental and physical, required 

 in the ceaseless labours necessary to the accom- 

 plishment of his task, alone constituted an ordeal 

 that few could sustain. Often days, and even 

 weeks, were passed without the slightest results 

 to his researches. Hundreds of miles were trav- 

 ersed, woods and shores ransacked in arduous 

 toil, and not a single discovery made ! Hunger, 

 weariness, disappointment, would necessarily 

 press upon the wanderer sujBPering deprivation 

 in solitude, where unprotected he was exposed to 

 the inclemency of the atmosphere, and the ruth- 

 lessness of the elements. At such times, when 

 prostrated with fatigue, and wearied with the 

 delayed fulfilment of his hopes, imagination 

 too would scare him with her cruel phantoms. 

 Sometimes, betaking himself to repose in the 

 dreary recesses of the forest, he would be stricken 



