PLANTER AND MERCHANT 37 
to Santo Domingo by way of the Ohio and the Mis- 
sissippi. Symptoms of unrest were already prevalent 
in the northern provinces of the island but had caused 
no serious alarm in the south. Jean Audubon’s aim 
seems to have been to collect debts due him in the United 
States and to leave the capital invested there. At all 
events it was on this occasion that he purchased the farm 
of “Mill Grove,” near Philadelphia, the history of which 
will be given a little later (see Chapter VII). He had 
no intention, however, of living in Pennsylvania, for he 
immediately leased this estate to its former owner and 
hurried away. 
July 14, 1789, found the elder Audubon enlisted as 
a soldier in the National Guards at Les Cayes. These 
colonial troops, which were originally militia organiza- 
tions modeled after similar bodies in France, were reor- 
ganized at this time to meet any possible emergencies. 
Affairs in the southern provinces of Santo Domingo 
had followed, up to this moment, their normal course, 
and Jean Audubon, who could have learned nothing of 
what had transpired at home, decided to entrust his 
various interests to the hands of agents and return to 
France. This was probably in late August or early 
September, 1789, as we know that he first returned to 
the United States and visited Richmond, Virginia, at 
the close of that year.1_ Strangely enough, on the twen- 
tieth day of the former month the National Assembly at 
Paris had voted the celebrated Declaration of Rights, 
which was destined to upturn the whole social system 
of Santo Domingo and to convert that island into a 
purgatory of the direst anarchy, strife, and bloodshed 
which the world had ever known, or at least remem- 
bered; but fully six weeks must have elapsed before news 
1See letter to Dacosta, Vol. I, p. 121. 
