156 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



bury, Secretary of the Treasury, was as friendly as ever, 

 and offered the party passage to Charleston on the 

 Campbell, a vessel of fifty-five tons carrying three guns* 

 and twenty-one men, but Audubon, who was a poor 

 sailor, preferred to travel by land and await the com- 

 ing of this boat at the Bachman home. Before leaving 

 the capital the naturalist and his son were invited to 

 dine informally at the White House, and he had the 

 opportunity of studying at close range "a man who had 

 done much good and much evil to our country." Said 

 Audubon of this dinner: 



I sat close to him ; we spoke of olden times, and touched 

 slightly on politics, and I found him very averse to the cause of 

 the Texans. . . . The dinner was what might be called plain 

 and substantial in England ; I dined from a fine young turkey, 

 shot within twenty miles of Washington. The general drank 

 no wine, but his health was drunk by us more than once; and 

 he ate very moderately, his last dish consisting of bread and 

 milk." 



Audubon, with his son, John, left Washington on 

 the 10th of November, and after traveling six days on 

 one of "the most extraordinary railroads in the world," 

 they reached the city of Charleston, where, under the 

 hospitable roof of John Bachman, the party eventually 

 passed the winter, though momentarily expecting their 

 vessel, which did not arrive. During this long interval 

 of waiting, Audubon made drawings of all the new birds 

 in the Nuttall-Townsend collection, representing up- 

 wards of seventy figures, and Miss Maria Martin, Bach- 

 man's sister-in-law, again assisted him in drawing 

 plants and insects. 



"Lucy B. Audubon, ed., op. cit., p. 398. 



