220 AUDUBON 



cleaned. The rack was filled with blades, the trough with 

 corn, a good-sized pumpkin or some hen's-eggs, whenever 

 they could be procured, were thrown in, and if oats were 

 to be had, half a bushel of them was given in preference 

 to corn, which is apt to heat some horses. In the morn- 

 ing, the nearly empty trough and rack afforded sufficient 

 evidence of the state of his health. 



I had not ridden him many days before he became so 

 attached to me that on coming to some limpid stream in 

 which I had a mind to bathe, I could leave him at liberty 

 to graze, and he would not drink if told not to do so. He 

 was ever sure-footed, and in such continual good spirits 

 that now and then, when a Turkey happened to rise from 

 a dusting-place before me, the mere inclination of my 

 body forward was enough to bring him to a smart canter, 

 which he would continue until the bird left the road for 

 the woods, when he never failed to resume his usual trot. 

 On my way homeward I met at the crossings of the Juni- 

 ata River a gentleman from New Orleans, whose name is 

 Vincent Nolte.^ He was mounted on a superb horse, 

 for which he had paid three hundred dollars, and a ser- 

 vant on horseback led another as a change. I was then 



1 Vincent Nolte, in " Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres," gives an account 

 of his meeting on this occasion with Audubon, part of which is as follows: 

 " About ten o'clock I arrived at a small inn, close by the falls of the Juniata 

 River. The landlady showed me into a room and said I perhaps would 

 not mind taking my meal with a strange gentleman, who was already there. 

 This personage struck me as an odd fish. He was sitting at a table before 

 the fire, with a Madras handkerchief wound around his head, exactly in the 

 style of the French mariners of a seaport town. . . . He showed himself to 

 be an original throughout, but admitted he was a Frenchman by birth, and 

 a native of La Rochelle. However, he had come in his early youth to 

 Louisiana, had grown up in the sea-service, and had gradually become a 

 thorough American. This man, who afterwards won for himself so great 

 a name in natural history, particularly in ornithology, was Audubon." It 

 is needless to say that the personal history of Audubon as here given is 

 entirely erroneous ; but as the meeting was in 1811, and the book written 

 from memory in 1854, Mr. Nolte must be pardoned for his misstatements, 

 which were doubtless unintentional. 



