364 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
to be “a man of great physical strength and size”; in- 
stead, however, he saw 
a small, slender man, tottering on his feet, weaker than a 
newly hatched partridge; he welcomed me with tears in his 
eyes, held one of my hands, and attempted speaking, which was 
difficult to him, the Countess meanwhile rubbing his other hand. 
I saw at a glance the situation, and begged he would be seated 
. and I took a seat on a sofa that I thought would swallow 
me up, so much down swelled around me. It was a vast room, 
at least sixty feet long, and wide in proportion, let me say 
thirty feet, all hung with immense paintings on a rich purple 
ground; all was purple about me. The large tables were cov- 
ered with books, instruments, drawing apparatus, a telescope, 
with hundreds of ornaments. 
After luncheon Audubon’s “Book of Nature” was pro- 
duced, and his drawings spread out and admired. Next 
day the Countess, who was “a woman of superior intel- 
lect and conversation,” was given “a most unnecessary 
lesson” in drawing, for, said the naturalist, “she drew 
much better than I did; but I taught her to rub with 
cork, and prepare for water-color.” Before he left the 
Countess wrote her name in his subscription book, and 
arranged that he should return and resume his instruc- 
tion. 
One of Audubon’s early friends at Edinburgh was 
Captain Basil Hall,’® traveler and writer, who was then 
about to start on a journey through the United States; 
he told the naturalist that he was a midshipman on board 
the Leander ‘when Pierce was killed off New York,” 
at the time of Audubon’s return with Rozier to America 
in 1806, when Captain Sammis, upon seeing the British 
* Basil Hall (1788-1844), noted for his travels in China, Korea, and 
on the coasts of Chili, Peru and Mexico, visited the United States in 1827- 
28; his Travels in North America appeared in 1829. 
