46 AUDUBON 



knew, who had come to purchase salt. I felt no fatigue, 

 ate heartily, slept soundly without being rocked, and 

 having come forty miles had only forty-seven more to 

 walk to reach my home. Early next morning I pursued 

 my way ; the fe^ry boat took me from Illinois to Kentucky, 

 and as night came I found myself with my wife beside me, 

 my child on my knee." 



The time from now till 1819 was the most disastrous 

 period of Audubon's life, as regarded his finances. With 

 his brother-in-law, Thomas W. Bakewell, he engaged in 

 various ventures in which, whatever others did, he lost 

 money at every turn. The financial affairs of Kentucky 

 were, it is true, not on a very sound basis, but Audubon 

 frankly acknowledges the fault in many cases was his own. 

 Thomas W. Bakewell was often in New Orleans, where they 

 had a mercantile establishment, and Audubon spent not 

 only days, but weeks and months, at his favorite pursuits. 

 On his journeys to Philadelphia to procure goods he wan- 

 dered miles in all directions from the main route; when 

 in Henderson he worked, at times, very hard in the mill, 

 for, indeed, he never did anything except intensely ; but the 

 cry of the wild geese overhead, the sound of the chatter- 

 ing squirrel, the song of the thrush, the flash of the hum- 

 ming-bird with its jewelled throat, were each and all enough 

 to take him from work he hated as he never hated any- 

 thing else. 



When first in Henderson he bought land, and evidently 

 had some idea of remaining there permanently ; for, " on 

 March 16, 18 16, he and Mr. Bakewell took a ninety- 

 five years' lease of a part of the river front between First 

 and Second Sts., intending to erect a grist and saw mill, 

 which mill was completed in 1817, and yet stands, though 

 now incorporated in the factory of Mr. David Clark. The 

 weather-boarding whip-sawed out of yellow poplar is still 

 intact on three sides, the joists are of unhewn logs, and 

 the foundation walls of pieces of flat broken rock are four 



