FIRST VENTURES IN BUSINESS 167 
The numerous references which these letters con- 
tain regarding the disposition of the “Mill Grove” farm 
may well puzzle the reader who has followed the story 
to this point; we must therefore attempt to unravel the 
tangled threads of this intricate affair. In the spring 
of 1807 Audubon, who was then anxious to start a 
“retail shop,” complained that the land, which could not 
be sold to advantage, kept them short of capital and 
prevented them from dealing on so large a scale as 
they could wish. On the 24th of April he wrote that 
three weeks before he had gone to “Mill Grove” and 
closed an agreement for renting the property (evidently 
referring to the farm as distinct from the mine) for a 
year, being unable to do better, and that Ferdinand was 
then in Philadelphia trying to settle his father’s accounts 
with Dacosta, who did not readily forget his trickster’s 
réle. In Audubon’s letter of the same day, inclosed in 
the same packet with the request that it be delivered 
to his father, there is a similar reference, with the note 
that Ferdinand, who had charge of the settlement, had 
chosen Mr. Huron as arbitrator, but that he would not 
agree unless honest Miers Fisher had a part in it. 
Finally, as late as the 19th of July of that year he 
wrote to Rozier, the elder, that they were hoping to sell 
“Mill Grove” in the autumn, but would do so only at a 
good profit; yet at this time the property had been 
out of their possession, technically at least, for nearly 
a year. 
Still more curious is this statement in Audubon’s 
autobiography,” relating to the year 1813; “I bought a 
wild horse, and on its back travelled over Tennessee and 
a portion of Georgia, and so round till I finally reached 
2 Maria R. Audubon, 4udubon and his Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, 
p. 32. 
