158 AUDUBON THE NATURALIST. 
CHAPTER XII. 
Wee untiring zeal Audubon continued to 
work out his great plan—a source to him 
of perpetual anxiety in alternating hopes and 
fears. The unfaltering enterprise and powers 
of endurance, both mental and physical, required 
in the ceaseless labours necessary to the accom- 
plishment of his task, alone constituted an ordeal 
that few could sustain. Often days, and even 
weeks, were passed without the slightest results 
to his researches. Hundreds of miles were trav- 
ersed, woods and shores ransacked in arduous 
toil, and nota single discovery made! Hunger, 
weariness, disappointment, would necessarily 
“press upon the wanderer suffering deprivation 
in solitude, where unprotected he was exposed to 
the inclemency of the atmosphere, and the ruth- 
lessness of the elements. At such times, when 
prostrated with fatigue, and wearied with the 
delayed fulfilment of his hopes, imagination 
too would scare him with her cruel phantoms, 
Sometimes, betaking himself to repose in the 
dreary recesses of the forest, he would be stricken 
