A THUNDER STORM. 85 
binger of returning serenity in the elements, its 
wild notes were welcomed by him with peculiar 
pleasure. Often it was his fate to pass the night 
in some wretched hut, so ill constructed as 
to leave him entirely unprotected against the 
storm. The wavering sparks of his log fire, ex- 
tinguished -by the dense torrents of rain, which 
enveloped the whole Heavens and earth in 
one murky mass, defied his best efforts to re- 
kindle them ; the sole light that met his eyes, 
were the red streaks of the thunderbolt, which, 
scathing in its course the stateliest trees close 
around him, was followed instantaneously by 
the crashing, deafening sounds of their destruc- 
tion, and the rolling echoes of the tumult far and 
near. On such a night, desolate, indeed, was 
Audubon’s situation; far from the sweetest 
shelter of home, and the objects dearest to his 
heart. Weary, hungry and sad, he had the 
nisery, above all, of anticipating the destruction 
of those treasured possessions, for which so much 
was relinquished and endured, as the water, col- 
lecting into a stream, menaced them by rushing 
through his camp, forcing its miserable inhabi- 
tant, shivering as in an ague, to stand erect and 
wait while, tormented with mosquitoes, with a 
martyr’s patience, the return of day! How did 
his memory return to the peaceful, happy days 
of his early youth, the delights of his home and 
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