“EPISODES” OF WESTERN LIFE 279 
Later they rode on together as far as Lexington, where 
they appear to have parted company. 
The discrepancies between these accounts could 
hardly be greater, and they serve to illustrate the lib- 
erties which Audubon sometimes took with facts in com- 
posing his “Episodes.” The travelers met, not on horse- 
back, but at the supper table of a country inn; Nolte 
was then alone and had but one horse, while the greater 
part of the return journey was made by flatboat with 
Audubon as his guest; corn blades, pumpkins and trout 
suggest any other season than midwinter, with heavy 
snows on the mountains and rivers choked with ice. 
Audubon in this instance, as already explained, com- 
bined the incidents of two different journeys and col- 
ored the narrative to suit his fancy. There was no ap- 
parent motive to mislead the reader, and one of his 
readers he must have known would probably be Vincent 
Nolte, though he was not a subscriber to The Birds of 
America; Nolte did read the story, and was pleased with 
the “flattering acknowledgment of the little service” 
that he was able to render Audubon at that time as well 
as later in his career. 
Both travelers felt the great earthquakes while mak- 
ing this journey, but probably not until they had parted 
company at Lexington. Audubon has given a vivid 
account of this experience in a characteristic sketch, but 
as usual there are no dates." He was overtaken, as he 
said, while “traveling through the Barrens of Kentucky 
. In the month of November,” when he thought his 
terrified “horse was about to die, and would have sprung 
from his back had a minute more elapsed, but at that 
instant all the shrubs and trees began to move from 
their very roots; the ground rose and fell in successive 
™“The Earthquake,” Ornithological Biography, vol. i, p. 239. + 
