CHAPTER XVIII 
EARLY “EPISODES” OF WESTERN LIFE 
Methods of composition—“A Wild Horse”—Henderson to Philadelphia in 
1811—Records of Audubon and Nolte, fellow travelers, compared— 
The great earthquakes—The hurricane—The outlaw—Characterization 
of Daniel Boone—Desperate plight on the prairie—Regulator law in 
action—Frontier necessities—The ax married to the grindstone. 
Audubon’s sketches of life and scenery in America, 
which he designated as “Episodes,” were interspersed 
in his Biography of birds’ to brighten the narrative 
and beguile the reader. Extending to the number of 
sixty, and dealing mainly with events between the years 
1808 and 1834, they abound in tales of adventure and 
graphic pictures of pioneer life which for their per- 
sonal charm, local coloring, and human interest are 
worthy of high praise. Some of these sketches have 
been copied widely and some have been translated into 
Audubon’s native tongue; some have even found their 
way into schoolbooks. While they have deservedly won 
the naturalist many readers, not a few have subjected 
him to harsh criticism on the score of too vivid coloring 
or historical inaccuracy, a fault to which he was par- 
ticularly prone. Whenever Audubon went directly to 
nature to exercise his pencil or brush or wrote with his 
subject before him, he was truth itself, but in writing 
offhand and from memory of past events he was wont 
1In the first three volumes only of the Ornithological Biography 
(Bibl. No. 2), being omitted from the last two on account of the 
exigencies of space. 
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