DACOSTA AND THE MINE 115 
tion to a small salary.* In case the mine proved a suc- 
cess, it was understood that young Audubon was to 
be taken into the business and thus obtain a means of 
self-support. 
Dacosta was at first averse to forming a company, but 
the Quaker tenant, William Thomas, who caught the 
fever, and who was thought to possess more knowledge 
of the mine than he was ready to divulge, seems to 
have been taken conditionally into the partnership. Da- 
costa made full reports of his progress to the old sailor 
at Couéron, who came regularly to Nantes to send back 
to America his well considered answers and candid ad- 
vice. Dacosta also called persistently for money, but 
as Lieutenant Audubon was unable to meet these de- 
mands, he applied to his friend Francois Rozier, a 
wealthy merchant at Nantes, to supply the needed capi- 
tal. Rozier invested 16,000 francs, and to complicate 
matters took a mortgage upon one-half of the value of 
“Mill Grove,” in which the earlier proprietor, John 
Augustin Prevost, as well as Francis Dacosta, was also 
interested. Jean Audubon, Dacosta and Rozier thus 
became partners in an enterprise which seems to have 
swallowed up all of the money which was advanced and 
never to have made any substantial returns. 
The eventual failure of the lead mine must be at- 
tributed in part to the high cost of materials, as well 
as to the expense involved in uncovering the ore, a 
difficulty which all later exploiters seem to have found 
insuperable. Dacosta also discovered that the manage- 
*The following item appears in Dacosta’s final account: “To com- 
pensation claimed by Francis Dacosta for making up half of his expenses, 
in managing the mining works, the mill-repairs, and taking up the forma- 
tion of a company during two years of constant cares, troubles, and 
loss of time, at 300 dollars a year—$600,00.” (From statement of dis- 
puted claim; see Note, Vol. I, p. 168.) 
