238 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
iana, on the right bank of the Mississippi, a hundred 
miles north of the mouth of the Ohio. 
This new venture promised to be both hazardous and 
uncertain, and as Mrs. Audubon and Rozier were not 
on the friendliest terms, Audubon decided to leave his 
family at Henderson, where a home for his wife and 
infant son could always be had under the hospitable roof 
of Dr. Adam Rankin, who became one of the naturalist’s 
staunchest friends. If their stock in trade at this time 
actually consisted of “three hundred barrels of whisky, 
sundry dry-goods and powder,” as Audubon affirmed, 
the keel boat which they then engaged was certainly 
calculated to bear a goodly load.* At all events the 
partners, with young Pope, their clerk, set out bravely, 
in a snow storm, in December, 1810. They floated with 
the current at a rate of about five miles an hour, while 
they helped their craft along by means of four oars in 
her bow and steered it with the aid of a slender tree 
trunk, “shaped at its outer extremity like the fin of a 
dolphin.” 
This journey of upwards of 165 miles lasted altogeth- 
er more than nine weeks. It proved adventurous enough, 
but it was of no use to Audubon except in furnishing 
him with drawings of new birds and the raw materials 
for many “Episodes.” The journal of his experiences 
on the great rivers during that eventful winter of 1810 
and 1811 is interesting for the sidelights which it throws 
both upon his character and upon the state of the coun- 
try at an elder day. Held up by the ice for several 
weeks at Cash Creek, near the mouth of the Ohio, to 
his own delight but to Rozier’s sorrow, Audubon 
tramped the country and hunted wild swans and larger 
game with the friendly Shawnee Indians. ‘When one 
*See Vol. I, p. 235. 
