40 AUDUBON 



knowledge of putting up my models, in true and good 

 positions according to the ways and habits of my beauti- 

 ful feathered subjects. During these happy years I man- 

 aged to make drawings of about two hundred species of 

 birds, all of which I brought to America and gave to 

 my Lucy.-' 



" At last my father associated me with Ferdinand Ro- 

 zier, as you already know, and we were fairly smuggled 

 out of France ; for he was actually an officer attached to 

 the navy of that country, and though I had a passport 

 stating I was born at New Orleans, my French name would 

 have swept that aside very speedily. Rozier's passport 

 was a Dutch one, though he did not understand a single 

 word in that language. Indeed, our passengers were a 

 medley crowd ; two days out two monks appeared among 

 us from the hold, where our captain had concealed 

 them." 



This same " medley crowd " appears to have comprised 

 many refugees from the rule of Napoleon, this being about 

 1806, and the amusements were varied, including both 

 gaming and dancing. To quote again : " Among the 

 passengers was a handsome Virginian girl, young and 

 graceful. She was constantly honored by the attentions 

 of two Frenchmen who belonged to the nobility; both 

 were fine young fellows, travelling, as was not uncommon 

 then, under assumed names. One lovely day the bon- 

 net of the fair lady was struck by a rope and knocked 

 overboard. One of the French chevaliers at once leaped 



■" In 1836, Audubon wrote to Dr. John Bachman : " Some of my early 

 drawings of European birds are still in our possession, but many have been 

 given away, and the greatest number were destroyed, not by the rats that 

 gnawed my collection of the " Birds of America," but by the great fire in New 

 York, as these drawings were considered my wife's special property and 

 seldom out of her sight. Would that the others had been under her 

 especial care also I Yet, after all, who can say that it was not a material 

 advantage, both to myself and to the world, that the Norway rats destroyed 

 those drawings ? " 



