JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY 29 
before the treaty of peace was signed at Paris, February 
10, 1768. Apart from her interests in the West Indies, 
France was stripped at this time of all her vast pos- 
sessions in America, save only the two little islands of 
Saint Pierre and Miquelon. 
Whether Pierre Audubon shared the fate of his son 
we are unable to say, for at this point he drops out 
of our records and we do not hear of him again. It 
is certain that he never made another voyage with 
Jean, who returned to his native town with his passion 
for the sea unabated, and at nineteen reéntered the mer- 
chant marine as a novice. His next voyage, on the ship 
La Caille, Captain Pigeon, was to execute a govern- 
mental commission at the Island of Miquelon. Five 
golden years of his youth had been spent in captivity; 
if productive of nothing else they had given him a knowl- 
edge of the English tongue, but they had also engen- 
dered bitter hatred of the English race, a feeling which 
his son confessed to have shared in his youthful days.® 
The period from 1766 to 1768 was occupied in four 
voyages to Newfoundland, probably in the interest of 
the codfish trade, first as sailor before the mast in Le 
Printemps, and then as lieutenant in a ship called also 
La Marianne, with alternate sailings from, and to, La 
Rochelle and Les Sables d’Olonne. On his third voyage 
to Newfoundland, which was made in 1767, when he 
was twenty-three years old, Jean Audubon ranked as 
5 This was recalled by the naturalist on March 5, 1827, when he 
wrote: “As a lad I had a great aversion to anything English or Scotch, 
and I remember when travelling with my father to Rochefort in January, 
1800, I mentioned this to him. . . . How well I remember his reply... . 
‘Thy blood will cool in time, and thou wilt be surprised to see how gradually 
prejudices are obliterated, and friendships acquired, towards those that 
we at one time held in contempt. Thou hast not been in England; I have, 
and it is a fine country.’” (See Maria R. Audubon, Audubon and His 
Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, p. 216). 
