Under a Wild Sky (15 page)

At Schenectady they caught a stagecoach for Albany, where they remained two days before boarding a sloop that took them down the Hudson to New York City. Wilson spent $12 on new trousers and boots, leaving him unable to afford coach fare the rest of the way. He said goodbye to Leech and set off for Philadelphia on foot, arriving at Gray's Ferry a week later with seventy-five cents in his pocket. On the last day, he walked forty-seven miles. In all, Wilson had traveled nearly thirteen hundred miles in two months, mostly on foot. He told Bartram he couldn't wait to make a longer trip:

Though in this tour I have had every disadvantage of deep roads and rough weather; hurried marches, and many other inconveniences to encounter, yet so far am I from being satisfied with what I have seen, or discouraged by the fatigues which every traveler must submit to, I feel more eager than ever to commence some more extensive expedition, where scenes and subjects entirely new, and generally unknown, might reward my curiosity, and where perhaps my humble acquisitions might add something to the stores of knowledge.

Wilson said he planned to work hard to improve his drawing for this purpose. Over the winter, he practiced. It was a cold season.
Both the Schuylkill and the Delaware froze solid, and Wilson hunched over his
drawing table. He also wrote—this time an epic poem of more than two thousand lines titled
The Foresters
, which described the trip to Niagara. He told his nephew Duncan that he worked harder on this than on any poem he'd ever written and that if it wasn't any good he'd never write one that was.

Wilson gave the stuffed skin of his unknown species of bird to Charles Willson Peale for display to the public.
Peale, part naturalist and part showman, had opened his famous Philadelphia Museum in 1786. It had become one of the wonders of the modern world, housing the first complete reconstruction of a mastodon skeleton, plus an enormous collection of living and stuffed animals, including many that had been brought back by the Lewis and Clark expedition. The museum was well known even in Europe, where it was said to be worth a trip across the Atlantic.
Peale's collections were so extensive that many naturalists, including Wilson, used them to study specimens that were difficult to locate or draw in nature.

Wilson also sent drawings of twenty-eight birds to William Bartram, asking his honest opinion. These, Wilson said, represented birds that were found in Pennsylvania or that passed through the state.
He also sent more drawings to Thomas Jefferson—as an apology for his earlier mistake with the Canada jay. Meanwhile, Wilson talked Alexander Lawson into giving him instruction in engraving and set about making several copper plates of his drawings. Wilson was convinced that, if he did the engraving himself as Catesby had, it would be possible to publish a ten-volume work incorporating hand-colored plates of all the American birds into a letterpress giving a written natural history for each species—and to make the venture profitable with as few as two hundred subscribers. Once the first volume was completed, he could use it to sell the rest. Concerned that his firsthand observations were still limited to Pennsylvania and upstate New York, Wilson also began thinking about an expedition to the frontier—the real frontier, beyond the settled territories just west of the mountains.
Early in 1806, Wilson suggested to Bartram that they undertake a journey down the Ohio River, at least as far as St. Louis and possibly down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

Wilson had recently spoken with a local man who'd made this trip only a year before. He told Wilson that nothing could have been simpler or more pleasant. The Ohio was a gentle waterway, easily navigated in a small boat. The weather never got too cold nor the mosquitoes too fierce. One
could sleep in the open without worries. The man, who had no interest in natural history, said he hadn't even bothered taking a gun or fishing tackle along. Wilson was excited. Perhaps, he suggested to Bartram, they could get President Jefferson to endorse the expedition in some official way—or at a minimum to provide advice and introductions to influential citizens they might call on during their travels.

By chance, just as Wilson was mulling this idea, news circulated that President Jefferson planned to send a team of explorers to the West the following summer, on a mission to investigate the length of the Mississippi and several of its major tributaries and surrounding regions. Wilson thought he and Bartram—who was acquainted with the president—should apply to join the expedition. Bartram, however, was not up to it. Wilson probably had a hard time not thinking of his friend as the adventurer, driven by curiosity about nature, who had explored the wilds of Florida. But that was decades ago. Bartram was now in his late sixties.
His eyesight was failing and his appetite for the rigors of such a trip had faded.

In February 1806, Wilson wrote to Jefferson himself and asked to be named to the Mississippi expedition. He told the president he was presently composing a new illustrated ornithology of American birds—a work that would correct the deficiencies of Catesby and others. He said he had already completed more than one hundred drawings and two plates had thus far been engraved. But any comprehensive study of North American birds would necessarily have to include species found in the Western territories, as many of these were absent from the Eastern Seaboard. So the trip suited Wilson's purposes—and vice versa. Wilson pointed out that he was single, well accustomed to the hardships of travel in the wild, and able to leave on short notice. Finally, Wilson wrote, he wished to undertake this mission with the primary purpose of enhancing the reputation of the president, whom he awkwardly addressed as “Your Excellency.”

Jefferson never answered.

As it turned out, Wilson got a better offer.
In April he quit his job at the Union School in Gray's Ferry to accept a position as an assistant editor for a new edition of the twenty-two-volume
Ree's Cyclopedia
. The publisher was Samuel Bradford, a well-connected Philadelphia bookseller who, among other claims to fame, was married to the mayor's daughter. Wilson could scarcely believe his good fortune.
He was freed at last from the tortures of teaching—and had been hired at the handsome salary of
$900 a year. But the best part was that Bradford was interested in Wilson's bird book.

Although Wilson thought his preliminary attempts at engraving his own drawings were passable, he realized that they would never be as good as Lawson's work—and also that doing his own engraving would eat away at the time he needed for fieldwork and drawing.
When Bradford agreed to finance the first volume with engravings by Lawson, Wilson's course was finally set. Commingling his work on the encyclopedia with his ornithological studies, Wilson in the spring of 1807 drew up a prospectus for a work to be called
American Ornithology
.
The prospectus offered a rationale for the book—Wilson went on at some length about the glories of American birds and the shortcomings of the European naturalists who had attempted to describe them—and gave a general idea of what the subscriber might expect. Wilson's plan was to issue installments, or “Numbers,” every two months. Each Number would depict “at least” ten bird species on three ten-by-thirteen-inch hand-colored plates, plus written descriptions of each species. The Numbers would continue “until the whole be completed.” The subscription price was $2 per number. Wilson added that it was not, at present, possible to ascertain just how big the finished work would be, but that it was likely to consist of at least one hundred plates bound in “two handsome volumes.” This plan was modified in the months ahead.
When the first volume of
American Ornithology
was completed in September 1808, it depicted thirty-eight species of birds on nine colored plates that were inserted at intervals in a 160-page letterpress of written descriptions. It cost $12. With a total of ten volumes now projected, a subscription to the complete work was priced at $120. Among the earliest subscribers was the president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.

7

THE EXQUISITE RIVER

Turdus polyglottus
: The Mocking Bird

See how he flies round his mate, with motions as light as those of the butterfly! His tail is widely expanded, he mounts in the air to a small distance, describes a circle, and, again alighting, approaches his beloved one, his eyes gleaming with delight, for she has already promised to be his and his only. His beautiful wings are gently raised, he bows to his love, and again bouncing upwards, opens his bill, and pours forth his melody, full of exultation at the conquest which he has made.

—Ornithological Biography

T
he newly married Audubons and friend Rozier had spent a couple of weeks in Pittsburgh, arranging passage downriver and acquiring more inventory for the store in Louisville.
Lucy, like other visitors to the city, found its smoky streets oppressive. But she was impressed by the goods to be had and by the hum of activity along the riverfront, where she managed to ignore that portion of the action occurring in the saloons and brothels catering to the watermen. Having set out so soon after their wedding, the Audubons were happy to be in one place for a time. In the evenings, Audubon and Lucy had their honeymoon.
Lucy, in a letter sent back to England, coyly informed a cousin of the “most excellent disposition” of her new husband, hinting at an unspecified but powerful attraction that “adds very much to the happiness of married life.”

Now twenty-one years old, Lucy was wildly in love with Audubon—and also committed to the obligations of marriage. These she construed as meaning she was henceforth first and foremost a partner and companion to a husband whose expectations and demands were hers to fulfill. Lucy apparently never hesitated or offered the slightest protest over Audubon's abrupt decision to take her away from her family and the comforts of Pennsylvania to a remote, thinly populated frontier town. While she had found the trip at times difficult, especially in the mountains, she took care to emphasize the positive.
Without even mentioning the overturned
wagon that might have killed her, Lucy gamely told her cousin merely that “great stones beneath the wheels make the stage rock about most dreadfully.” Putting a sunny spin on the journey to Pittsburgh, Lucy added that she was sure anyone would have enjoyed the many beautiful sights they took in along the way—if only it were somehow possible to do so without enduring the “fatigues” of the actual trip. In any event, if this was where her life now led, then this was where she would happily go in the performance of her “new duties.”

“As yet they have been light,” Lucy said of her marital responsibilities, “and be they what they may I hope I shall ever perform them cheerfully.”

Eager to proceed from Pittsburgh, the three found space, finally, aboard a flatboat. These cumbersome but serviceable craft, which were also called “Kentucky boats,” were the workhorses of the river. Half barge, half houseboat, they came in many sizes and could ship great loads of people, livestock, furniture, and the like.
A typical boat large enough to accommodate a single family and their possessions was twelve to fifteen feet abeam and thirty or forty feet long. One could be purchased for under $50. Vessels twice that size were not uncommon, and a large flatboat could carry seventy tons or more. All were built on a simple configuration. The hull was essentially a rectangular wooden box, flat on the bottom, sometimes with a slightly angled bow and stern. Fully loaded, a flatboat had only a couple feet of freeboard. Extra caulk and a pump were essential gear. A low, shedlike house sat amidship. Though austere, these shelters could be fitted out with brick fireplaces for cooking and some heat.

Flatboats were not so much piloted as they were passively ridden.
Travelers were advised to let the current do the work of finding the channel as it meandered among the Ohio's many islands and sandbars, though the boats could be steered a little with a long sweep on the stern and oars deployed toward the bow. The trip downriver was usually smooth and safe, but a flatboat could be swamped if unevenly loaded or carelessly handled. Overnight changes in the level of the river could put a corner of an improperly moored flatboat under—and the rest might follow in short order. Tangles of fallen trees that collected in “snags” at the heads of islands were a common hazard—it could take several days to free a boat caught in a snag. In fair weather and high water it was considered prudent to put ashore as infrequently as possible and to travel through the night, though there were so many boats on the river that groups of pioneers often tied up alongside one another for company after dark. Encounters
with hostile Indians or pirates were possible, but such risks diminished with each passing year as the river valley filled with settlers. Travelers were more likely to be accosted by entrepreneurs and pimps who converted flatboats into floating taverns. By the time the Audubons set out for Louisville, people were already talking about how crowded with towns and farms the riverbanks had become. The frontier was moving west. And however far you went, that was where you stayed—flatboats were one-way propositions.
At their final destination, the boats were knocked apart and their timbers sold or used to build a house.

The Audubons' departure in late April came at an auspicious time. Spring brought high water and easy navigation on the Ohio.
The boat, Lucy reported, was reasonably comfortable, with a cabin ceiling “just high enough to admit a person walking upright.” The ride was surprisingly smooth, Lucy said, though on one windy section of the river the boat began to pitch sufficiently that she felt momentary seasickness.