772 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 



gambols of the fawns. At night the night-hawks skimmed around him, and 

 alone the distant howling of the wolves gave him hope that he would soon 

 arrive at some woodland where settlers might be found. At one settler's 

 hut he would have been murdered by his hostess in his sleep had not a 

 friendly Indian put him on his guard. His hairbreadth escapes by flood and 

 field would fill a volume, and would be more entertaining than any of Coop- 

 er's tales. 



While he was at Hendersonville his father died, leaving him his property 

 in France and $17,000 in money. The former he never claimed till his sons 

 were grown up ; the latter was lost by the bankruptcy of the merchant in 

 whose hands the money had been deposited, yet he never lost heart. For a 

 time he seemed to settle ; he refused a colonel's commission in an expedi- 

 tion to South America ; he bought a house and some negroes, and began to 

 prosper. Then, in an unlucky moment, he erected a steam-mill at Hender- 

 sonville, which ruined all concerned. The naturalist speaks with bitterness 

 of the " infernal mill," and with equal fierceness of a steamer that he and his 

 mill-partners had purchased and sold without ever being paid. Difficulties 

 now increased, bills became due, he handed over to his creditors all he pos- 

 sessed, and left Hendersonville with his sick wife, his gun, his dog, and his 

 drawings. The family once more pitched their tent in Louisville, where 

 Audubon turned his artistic skill to practical use, and started as a portrait 

 draughtsman. In a week or two he had as much work as he could do. His 

 business spread, and he enjoyed an extended reputation for the success with 

 which he portrayed the features of the dead. One success brought on an- 

 other, and as a portrait painter he seemed to have got a new start in life. 

 Then he became a taxidermist to the Museum at Cincinnati, and was liberally 

 remunerated, and at the same time he opened a drawing-school. But this 

 gleam of affluence was short ; the work at the Museum was soon done, his sit- 

 ters would not pay, and his friends spoke of his wandering habits. In truth, 

 during his whole life in Kentucky and Ohio he was rambling through the woods 

 in search of specimens. His gun supplied all his wants, a maple-sugar camp 

 was a pleasant refuge in the woods, and a glade of the primeval forest, near 

 some spring or salt-lick where game was plentiful, his chosen bivouac. His 

 chance acquaintances were all kinds of wandering adventurers, who were 

 wending westward with their wagons and household goods, or drifting down 

 from the upper waters of the Ohio in a family ark ; he describes graphically 

 his meetings with Daniel Boone, the Kentucky hero, and with the eccentric 

 Rafinesque, like himself a naturalist, but in another branch, that of botany. 

 Audubon was now known as a student of nature, for Rafinesque came with a 



