“EPISODES” OF WESTERN LIFE 277 
burgh to purchase two flatboats, for in addition to their 
horses they had planned to carry 400 barrels of flour, 
from the sale of which in the South they expected to 
defray the expenses of their journey. Having pur- 
chased a fine horse in Philadelphia, Nolte left that city 
in December, and with saddle-bags strapped to his 
horse’s back, rode on “entirely alone.” He crossed the 
highest point of the Alleghany ridge at ten o’clock of a 
winter’s morning and later in the same day reached a 
small inn “close by the Falls of the Juniata River.” 
“The landlady,” to quote his narrative, “showed me into 
a room, and said, I perhaps would not mind taking my 
meal with a strange gentleman, who was already 
there.” This stranger, who immediately struck him as 
“an odd fish,” “was sitting at a table, before the fire, 
with a Madras handkerchief wound around his head, 
exactly in the style of the French mariners, or laborers, 
in a seaport town.” In the course of the conversation 
which then ensued he declared that he was an English- 
man, but Nolte was the last person to be deceived on a 
question of nationality and remarked at once that his 
speech betrayed him. “He showed himself,” to quote 
our senior traveler again, “to be an original throughout, 
but at last admitted that he was a Frenchman by birth, 
and a native of La Rochelle. However, he had come 
in his early youth to Louisiana, had grown up in the sea- 
service, and had gradually become a thorough Ameri- 
can.” When asked how this account squared with his 
earlier statement, said Nolte, “he found it convenient 
to reply in the French language: ‘when all is said and 
done, I am somewhat cosmopolitan; I belong to every 
country.’ This man,” to conclude, “who afterwards 
won for himself so great a name in natural history, par- 
ticularly in ornithology, was Audubon, who, however, 
