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250 



AUDUBON 



versed in the Indian languages, spoke French with the 

 greatest purity, and was a religious poet. Many a pleas- 

 ant hour have I spent in his company; but alas! he has 

 gone the way of all the earth ! 



THE LOST PORTFOLIO 



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While I was at Natchez, on the 31st of December, 1820, 

 my kind friend, Nicholas Berthoud, Esq., proposed to me 

 to accompany him in his keel-boat to New Orleans. At 

 one o'clock the steam-boat "Columbus" hauled off 

 from the landing and took our bark in tow. The 

 steamer was soon ploughing along at full speed, and 

 little else engaged our minds than the thought of our soon 

 arriving at the emporium of the commerce of the Missis- 

 sippi. Towards evening, however, several inquiries were 

 made respecting particular portions of the luggage, among 

 which ought to have been one of my portfolios, containing 

 a number of drawings made by me while gliding down the 

 Ohio and Mississippi from Cincinnati to Natchez, and of 

 which some were to me peculiarly valuable, being of birds 

 previously unfigured, and perhaps undescribed. The port- 

 folio was nowhere to be found, and I recollected that I 

 had brought it unde: my arm to the margin of the stream, 

 and there left it to the care of one of my friend's ser- 

 vants, who, in th*^ hurry of our departure, had neglected 

 to take it on board. Besides the drawings of birds, there 

 was in this collection a sketch in black chalk to which I 

 always felt greatly attached while from home. It is true 

 the features which it represented were indelibly engraved 

 in my heart ; but the portrait of her to whom I owe so 

 much of the happiness that I have enjoyed was not the 

 less dear to me. When I thought during the following 

 night of the loss I had sustained in consequence of my 



