256 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



dreds of young calves who die in early spring, so many are yet 

 to be found. Daily we see so many that we hardly notice them 

 more than the cattle in our pastures about our homes. But 

 this cannot last; even now there is a perceptible difference in 

 the size of the herds, and before many years the Buffalo, like 

 the Great Auk, will have disappeared. 



On the 9th of August he added: "I have scarcely- 

 done anything but write this day, and my memorandum 

 books are now crowded with sketches, measurements, 

 and descriptions." Those who maintain that a "howling 

 wilderness" is a place that never howls, should read his 

 note for August 19: "Wolves howling, and bulls roar- 

 ing, just like the long continued roll of a hundred 

 drums"; or this for the 21st: "Buffaloes all over the 

 bars and prairies, and many swimming ; the roaring can 

 be heard for miles." 



At Fort Union they built a Mackinaw barge forty 

 feet long, which they christened the "Union," and on 

 the 16th of August they started for St. Louis, which 

 was reached in safety on the 19th of October. There 

 they unloaded, and "sent all things to Nicholas Ber- 

 thoud's warehouse." "Reached home," said Audubon, 

 "at 3 p. m., November 6 th, 1843, and thank God, found 

 all my family quite well," 



When Audubon was returning by the canal route 

 from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, he was sought out by 

 a young traveler, who afterwards related the following 

 incident.** The naturalist, he was told, was under "a 

 huge pile of green blankets and fur," which he had al- 

 ready noticed on one of the benches, and had taken for 

 the fat pile of some western trader. Having waived 



i 'Charles Winterfield (Bibl. No. 149), The American Review, vol. i 



(1845) ; see also Charles W. Webber, Romance of Natural History (Bibl. 

 No. 173) (1852). 



