The Audubon Reader (54 page)
Read The Audubon Reader Online
Authors: John James Audubon
The
young bird of this species, which I kept alive for some time, fed freely after a few days’ captivity on soaked Indian cornmeal but evinced great pleasure when crayfishes were offered to it. On seizing one it beat it sideways on the ground until the claws and legs were broken off, after which it swallowed the body whole. It was fond of lying on its side in the sun for an hour or so at a time, pluming its body and nursing the sore wing. It walked lightly and very gracefully, though not so much so as the Herons. It did not
molest its companions and became very gentle and tame, following those who fed it like a common fowl.
The
Creoles of Louisiana call this species “
Bec croche
” and also “
Petit Flaman
,” although it is also generally known by the name of “Spanish Curlew.” The flesh which, as well as the skin, is of a dull orange color is extremely fishy, although the birds are often sold in our southernmost markets and are frequently eaten by the Indians.
The White Ibis has been shot eastward as far as
New Jersey. Of this I have been made aware by my generous friend
Edward Harris, Esq. I never saw one farther up the Mississippi than Memphis.
[The White Ibis,
Eudocimus albus
, appears in Plate 222 of
The Birds of America
.]
“We have been received with much urbanity …”
Boston, Massachusetts
14 August 1832
My dear Sir,
It would be impossible for me to express the regret which we all felt at being obliged to leave Camden without bidding you adieu, and of thanking you for your generous continued acts of kindness. We left Camden pressed by the season and the desire I have to fulfill towards my
subscribers, the world and indeed myself the task allotted me by Nature, the completion of my work. We arrived at New York but remained there only a portion of a day [and] therefore were denied the gratification of paying our regards to Mr. Lang. We proceeded by water and land carriage to this beautiful place, and I am happy to say have been received with as much urbanity as yourself are wont to do whenever we meet. We have indeed been quite successful, for we have now added to the list of our patrons 9 names and expect some more. Allow me to say that with my work, as in the days of ’76, the Bostonians have proved themselves the best supporters of a good cause in our country! Independent of the number of subscribers mentioned, we expect the support of the Cambridge University [i.e., Harvard], that of the
Natural History Society and again that of the state (pray remember how anxious we are to have all of the states). I made drawings of 3 rare species. One is the
Marsh Wren, which we searched in vain when near Salem. The second is a Fly Catcher described by Mr. Nuttall and the last a
Thrush. We leave this tomorrow for Portland in Maine, through which we will merely pass, and ere one week expires expect to be at the
Bay of Fundy …
“I left Kentucky to join Mr. Audubon …”
Boston, Massachusetts
7 October 1832
My dear Mrs. Gifford,
Our son leaves us in a few days for England, and I avail myself of the opportunity to address you again for the third time since my arrival in America, and I am very sorry to say I have not received a line from you since I left England. I trust no affliction is the cause of your silence. Our son will see you as soon as possible on his arrival and deliver to you a very few seeds which I have collected from different parts of this continent, a number of leaves I gathered and pressed I cannot send you now owing to their being left with other packages to come by sea, and I am afraid they will not reach us before the departure of Gifford for England.
I left Kentucky about the end of June to join Mr. Audubon in Philadelphia on his return from Florida; with some difficulties from the low stage of water in the Ohio, we at length landed at
Pittsburgh, where we found all my uncle’s family quite well. Mrs. Campbell was just recovering from her confinement. From Pittsburgh we crossed the mountains and proceeded to New York, where we spent one day with my sister Eliza and had the pleasure of also seeing sisters Ann and Sarah, who were on a visit at that time. We proceeded up the Sound and on to Boston, which is a more interesting place than any I have seen in the United States, and where we met with a most cordial welcome and obtained eight
subscribers to our work. After two weeks we proceeded east to Portland in Maine by sea, and from thence on the seacoast in quest of new objects for publication, until we came to the extreme boundary of the U.S., a place called Eastport, where there is an American garrison kept, and across the bay is the
Island of Campobello and the province of
New Brunswick, belonging to the British. After visiting all round this spot in a circuit we proceeded still further up the
Bay of Fundy and remained one day at St. John’s at the mouth of the river of the same name, which we ascended to
Fredericton, the seat of government, a very pretty village on the bank of the river. Here we stayed four days and Mr. A. completed a drawing or two, when we continued our progress up the river to Woodstock, the last settlement on the boundary line of Maine, where there is another American garrison commanded by
Major Clarke and in a village founded by and called after a Colonel Houlton. There are not more than a dozen dwellings in the place, and from the wildness of the adjacent country it seemed to me like being in exile for the inhabitants. We dined in sight of
Mars Hill, as it is called, a mountain of interest from its natural shape and as being the spot where the compromises for the two nations [i.e., the U.S. and Britain] disagreed about the boundary line, the settlement of which may yet occasion some difficulties. From Houlton we proceeded west again a great part of the way near the
Penobscot River, on the banks of which we generally took our meal in the middle of the day and drank of the stream. Many times we came in view of very pretty islands or small streams tumbling over rocks into the river, but the greater part of the distance was through dense forests with very few settlements until we reached Bangor, a very thriving place.
We passed many Indian villages, but the occupants were generally absent, either hunting or fishing for their winter supplies, that season being both long and severe in this latitude, so much so that the means of communication is thereupon the ice of the numerous streams that flow through this country. Our son will present you with a map of our states which I hope will afford you some pleasure as a medium of tracing the spots and places where we have traveled and where the birds and plants have been found. You will also derive some pleasure, I hope, from the new drawings which Gifford will shew you. We shall cross the ocean sometime in the present year, and then I hope to have the long-looked-for gratification of seeing you and those scenes which ever will be dear to me …
“I received a splendid specimen of the Golden Eagle …”
Boston, Massachusetts
20 March 1833
My dear friend,
The hand which now drives my pen was paralyzed on Saturday last for about one hour. The attack seized on my mouth & particularly my lips, so much so that I neither could articulate or hold anything. My good dear wife was terribly frightened, and yet acted so promptly with prudence & knowledge that I was relieved, as I already said, in about one hour. Dr. Warren came in, with our ever worthy friend Parkman, and administered me a dose which kept me “a-going” for 24 hours. Now much debility is all that ails me; moderate exercise and a cessation of work will reverse this and I hope soon to be myself again.
Friendship, my dear Harlan, is a jewel which I hold not only sacred, but one which being hereditary (for I received the principles thereof from my father), I never can part with. Through friendship and the love of nature’s works, all my happiness on this earth has been derived. I never redraw it when I have once found it accepted by anyone worthy of such deposit. Ergo, you are my friend and I am yours to the end of my days.
Money, the curse of mankind, never contributes to ameliorate our dispositions unless when it is dealt through benevolence’s hand. I shall be proud to have been poor as much as I am proud to receive money through generous benevolence. Money is wanted, money must be had and money shall be had as long as my fingers will not be palsied. Sometimes (and that is pretty frequently too) I feel myself as if about to be cast on a lee shore, it is true, but I shake myself on all such occasion, make a drawing and away with it to the nearest market. It brings something, always, and sometimes more than its intrinsic value. I have an extraordinary degree of confidence in providence, and thank God that power has never failed towards me!
Dr. Chalmer himself could scarce have delivered a better lecture
on the subject of money & friendship than I have accomplished and thus ends the subject.
Your welcome bill [i.e., banknote] for one hundred & fifty dollars is now going in the care of my better half. I wish you were as well in health as that bit of paper is in safety. I regret, however, that you should have been pushed for it. Your wife would not have been your friend had she nursed you any other way than kindly. What do you think of the balm which ever and anon circulates through a man’s veins on such occasions? The blessing of a happy marriage is the finest emblem of God’s power in behalf of the beings which he has created to “go forth and multiply!” God bless her and protect you both!!
My old friend … will write to you as well as to her as soon as we reach New York, where we expected to have been more than a week since. But to shew you that all is for the best, we, by having been unexpectedly detained here, have augmented our list of
subscribers with five valuable names, and moreover, we have received 7 volumes handsomely colored to supply those and receive “the ready” [cash]. See now how strangely our bark is tossed: poor as Job yesterday, rich as Croesus tomorrow! And who could not wish to live to enjoy this life of pleasurable anxiety? Not I, believe me.
Two days after you left us I received a splendid specimen of the
Golden Eagle. Six hours of confinement under a blanket in a tight closet with a pot of coal (lighted) so as to be carbonic gas [i.e., carbon monoxide] had no effect. ¼ of a pound of the best powdered sulfur was added; we were all drove off but Mr. Eagle paid no attention to our doings. A fine tale this to relate to Monsieur G[eorge] Ord of Philadelphia! It took me 13 days to draw it, and depend upon it, I have the drawing! The bird did not cost 100$—it was a female, caught in a fox trap and bought in per order. I had a great desire to try electricity [to euthanize it] but could not obtain a battery sufficiently powerful to be trusted for a single stroke. Tell all this to your society and assure them in my name that the experiments were made with care by an F.R.S. [i.e., a fellow of the Royal Society of London] of some merit!
The Numbers up to 31 of
The
Birds of America
are now in New York. That work enters the U.S. free of duty. The Numbers for your fair city will be there as soon as possible after I reach New York …
Journal
“The difficulties which are to be encountered in studying the habits of our
Water Birds are great,” Audubon writes in the introduction to volume 3 of the
Ornithological Biography.
“He who follows the feathered inhabitants of the forests and plains, however rough or tangled the paths may be, seldom fails to obtain the objects of his pursuit, provided he be possessed of due enthusiasm and perseverance. The Land Bird flits from bush to bush, runs before you, and seldom extends its flight beyond the range of your vision. It is very different with the Water Bird, which sweeps afar over the wide ocean, hovers above the surges, or betakes itself for refuge to the inaccessible rocks on the shore … If you endeavor to approach these birds in their haunts, they betake themselves to flight, and speed to places where they are secure from your intrusion.” Since the water birds would not come to him, he decided to go to them—to their nesting grounds in Labrador, where he could observe them in summer plumage rearing their young. In
Eastport, Maine, in the spring of 1833 he chartered a nearly-new 100-ton schooner, the
Ripley
, and had the hold floored to make a workroom, great room and dormitory. Besides his son John Woodhouse, who was 21 that year, he invited along four vigorous young men he and John had befriended in their New England expeditions:
George Shattuck of Boston, a young physician;
Thomas Lincoln, a stoic downeaster whose father was a judge;
William Ingalls, a Boston medical student; and
Joseph Coolidge, the son of an Eastport revenue cutter captain. The journal Audubon kept exists today only in a version edited by his granddaughter Maria R. Audubon, who softened, formalized and expurgated her grandfather’s more colorful prose. It is still lively, however, has long been out of print and is reproduced here in full
.
Eastport, Maine, June 4
. Our vessel is being prepared for our reception and departure, and we have concluded to hire two extra sailors and a lad; the latter to be a kind of major-domo, to clean our guns, etc., search for nests, and assist in skinning birds. Whilst rambling in the woods this morning, I found a Crow’s nest, with five young, yet small. As I ascended the tree, the parents came to their offspring crying loudly, and with such perseverance that in less than fifteen
minutes upwards of fifty pairs of these birds had joined in their vociferations; yet when first the parents began to cry I would have supposed them the only pair in the neighborhood.
Wednesday, June 5
. This afternoon, when I had concluded that everything relating to the charter of the
Ripley
was arranged, some difficulty arose between myself and Mr. Buck, which nearly put a stop to our having his vessel. Pressed, however, as I was, by the lateness of the season, I gave way and suffered myself to be imposed upon as usual, with a full knowledge that I was so. The charter was signed, and we hoped to have sailed, but tomorrow is now the day appointed. Our promised Hampton boat is not come.
