A MEETING OF RIVALS 205 
works &c. would make a noble picture. I began a very diligent 
search in the place the day after my arrival for subscribers 
and continued it for four days. I succeeded beyond expecta- 
tion having got 19 names of the most wealthy and respectable 
part of the inhabitants. The industry of the town is remark- 
able; every body you see is busy; & as a proof of the pros- 
perity of the place an eminent lawyer told me that there has not 
been one suit instituted against a mercht. of the town these 
three years! The Glass Houses, of which there are 3, have 
more demands for Glass than they are able to answer. Mr. 
Bakewell the proprietor of the best, shewed ... . yesterday a 
Chandelier of his manufacture highly ornamented, . . . for 
which he received 300 dollars. It would ornament the... . in 
Philada. and is perfectly transparent. 
Eight days after he had reached Pittsburgh, Wilson 
bravely launched a little skiff, which he christened the 
Ornithologist, and began an arduous and perilous 
journey to Cincinnati, Louisville and New Orleans, a 
distance of two thousand miles. “In this lonesome man- 
ner,” he wrote, “with full leisure for observation and 
reflection, exposed to hardships all day, and hard berths 
all night, I persevered from the 24th of February to 
Sunday evening, March 17th, when I moored my skiff 
safely in Bear Grass Creek, at the rapids of the Ohio, 
after a voyage of seven hundred and twenty miles.” 
Cincinnati, then a town of five hundred houses, was 
reached on the ninth of March; while there Wilson made 
the acquaintance of Dr. Daniel Drake, who was later 
Audubon’s friend, and examined a collection of Indian 
relics which had been taken from a freshly opened 
mound. He left Cincinnati convinced that its well-to- 
do class must be a very thoughtful people, so many of 
them, when approached for a subscription to his work, 
having replied that they would “think about it.” Upon 
