JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 77 1 



the measure of himself", ' placed all his drawings at the disposal of his visitor, 

 with the result of his researches, proposing a correspondence, and stipulating 

 only in return for an acknowledgment, in the published work, of what came 

 from his pencil. The offer was not accepted, and Wilson left Louisville, de- 

 claring he had not got one subscriber or one new bird, or received one act of 

 civility. " Science and literature has not one friend in this place." A most 

 unjust remark, had he but known the man before him. They were alike 

 pupils in the great school of nature, taking their lessons in the wilderness, 

 encountering, Wilson particularly, more enemies in the indifference of the 

 world than the " winter and rough weather" to which they voluntarily sub- 

 jected themselves. 



Audubon found business bad at Louisville and removed to Henderson. 

 He found it bad at Henderson and removed to St. Genevieve. The popula- 

 tion here was French Canadian, to which Audubon had all the French Creole's 

 antipathy, and he speedily returned to Henderson. It was on the way to St. 

 Genevieve, an old town forty miles below St. Louis, that he first saw the 

 great eagle that he named after Washington. All these wanderings of Audu- 

 bon were training him for his great work, and during the whole period his 

 soul was given to his favorite study rather than to mercantile adventures. 

 The country he traversed was unbroken wilderness — no towns, no villages, no 

 roads, no steamboats. When he left one of his temporary dwelling-places 

 he embarked his stock in trade — usually, it seems, whisky — his provisions, 

 his arms and powder, and pushed into the stream. The highest speed with 

 the current was five miles an hour ; days were passed in going a few miles, 

 but then these miles were miles of wild fowl, on the water and on the land, 

 and herds of wild deer and countless bears and raccoons. Encampments of 

 Indians were visited, and he joined the red men in their hunt. Some of his 

 vivid descriptions are of the adventures encountered 'in the company of these 

 Sons of the Forest. At times the boat had to be towed against the stream, 

 and every man had to haul. " While I was tugging with my back to the 

 Cordelia," he writes, " I kept my eyes on the forest or the ground, looking for 

 birds." Then came the camp on shore ; the deep slumber, the early start, 

 the same round of tugging and pulling, the same keen lookout for birds. 

 Often there was not a white man's cabin within twenty miles ; the Osage and 

 Shawnee Indians became his guides and comrades as he investigated the 

 habits of deer, bears, cougars, raccoons, and turkeys. " I drew more or less 

 by the side of the camp-fire every day." On another occasion he tells how 

 with his knapsack, his gun, and his dog, and well moccasined, he moved 

 slowly over the prairies, attracted by the brilliancy of the flowers and the 



