The essential facts regarding Audubon's birth and early years have now been given, and this is the true, though possibly not the complete, story. Anything which we now add, however, can be regarded as little better than speculation. Audubon is said to have received through his father a large sum of money from an unknown or unnamed source,[245] but as such stories are apt to be exaggerated, especially when an ocean intervenes between a testator and his heir, the statement may be erroneous; we have seen that Lieutenant Audubon was not in a position to make such gifts himself had he been so disposed. If the report were true, the money may have come from the estate of his mother, and through the agency of the mysterious "Audubon of La Rochelle," who is said to have been a politician.[246] In some of the passages which we do not quote, the naturalist would have his family believe that he was of noble birth, that his adoptive father was not his true father, and that both he and Lieutenant Audubon had received irremediable injury through the treachery of the mysterious uncle, "Audubon of La Rochelle." Now these strange statements of the naturalist, though not in accord with the facts as they are known to us, should be interpreted, I believe, in the light of possible stories that may have come to him in the glamour of his youth; his mind may have been diverted by them, he may have believed them, but of this nothing now can positively be known. To continue our conjectures, it is possible that the plain conflict between these supposititious tales and the facts that were revealed at his adoption, his baptism, and in the wills of his father and stepmother, as well as by the lawsuit which followed the former's death, all led him to resort to "enigma." We should also remember that the naturalist, who was careless of dates and historical facts, had finally left his home at the age of twenty, when young men as a rule are not curious about their family history, and that he reached the reminiscent stage late in life. It seems probable that the wording of his father's will and the later attempt to annul it finally induced him to wash his hands of the whole matter, even to breaking off relations with his family in France. Feeling, as undoubtedly he did, that public knowledge of those conditions, for which he was in no way responsible, might be a bar to all future aspirations, he was not loath to let the matter rest, so far as he and his immediate family were concerned, under a cloak of mystery. If such were in truth the case, I think few would find cause to blame him.

When we view the whole subject in this double light, of a duty owed to his family and of the possibility that conflicting stories had come to him at an earlier day, any embroidery or confusion which appears in many of his statements of a personal nature can be better understood. Such an explanation would be quite convincing if payments had actually come to him from his own mother's estate.

We will only add that Mrs. Audubon, who seemed to have shared her husband's intimate thoughts, apparently believed to the last in his high birth. When her younger son, John Woodhouse Audubon, lay at the point of death, in February, 1862, she was summoned to his bedside, but reached it too late to see him alive; upon entering the room Mrs. Audubon is said to have exclaimed: "Oh, my son, my son! to think that you should have died without having known the secret of your father's early life!" When asked by members of her family to what she then referred, she turned their questions aside, saying only that such remarks were common in moments of intense grief and excitement.

CHAPTER XVIII
EARLY "EPISODES" OF WESTERN LIFE

Methods of composition—"A Wild Horse"—Henderson to Philadelphia in 1811—Records of Audubon and Nolte, fellow travelers, compared—The great earthquakes—The hurricane—The outlaw—Characterization of Daniel Boone—Desperate plight on the prairie—Regulator law in action—Frontier necessities—The ax married to the grindstone.

Audubon's sketches of life and scenery in America, which he designated as "Episodes," were interspersed in his Biography of birds[247] to brighten the narrative and beguile the reader. Extending to the number of sixty, and dealing mainly with events between the years 1808 and 1834, they abound in tales of adventure and graphic pictures of pioneer life which for their personal charm, local coloring, and human interest are worthy of high praise. Some of these sketches have been copied widely and some have been translated into Audubon's native tongue; some have even found their way into schoolbooks. While they have deservedly won the naturalist many readers, not a few have subjected him to harsh criticism on the score of too vivid coloring or historical inaccuracy, a fault to which he was particularly prone. Whenever Audubon went directly to nature to exercise his pencil or brush or wrote with his subject before him, he was truth itself, but in writing offhand and from memory of past events he was wont to humor his fancy, disregarding dates as readily as he did the accents on French words. This tendency is particularly apparent in the accounts of some of his early adventures in the western country, such as "Louisville in Kentucky" (1808-10), "The Prairie" (1812), "A Wild Horse" (1811-13), and "The Eccentric Naturalist" (1818), the history of which is detailed in the following chapter. We shall examine some of these stories at this point, though their composition belongs to a later period, in order to reach a just conclusion in regard to the author's method, as well as for the intrinsic interest of the narratives themselves.

During Audubon's early life in Kentucky, as we have seen, he frequently visited the East, whether in the interest of birds or business, traveling by way of the river and the forest roads. Incidents of these journeys frequently occur in the "Episodes," but since dates commonly are omitted and the order of events is liable to be blended or confused, they cannot be trusted always for historical accuracy. Thus, "The Wild Horse" episode[248] professes to be an account of a single journey from Henderson, in Kentucky, to Philadelphia and back again, whereas some of the events recorded occurred in reality at least two years apart, such as the meeting with Nolte at the Falls of the Juniata River in December, 1811, and the naturalist's return from Pennsylvania with the proceeds of "Mill Grove," which could not have been earlier than 1813, the date of its sale to Mr. Samuel Wetherill, Junior.[249]

Audubon visited Philadelphia in November, 1811, and returned to Kentucky in December of that year, but whether it was upon this or some other journey that he rode a wild horse through seven states in going from his home at Henderson to the Quaker city, or whether such a journey ever occurred, is immaterial to the interest of the narrative. In this instance, however, we have the advantage of comparing the notes of a fellow traveler, Vincent Nolte, then a merchant at New Orleans.[250] First to follow Audubon's account, as given in his "Episode," we are told that he rode a wild mustang, named "Barro," that had never known a shoe, having been recently captured near the headwaters of the Arkansas. In going east he diverged from the beaten track to extend his knowledge of the country and of its bird life. From Henderson he passed through the heart of Tennessee to Knoxville, thence to Abington, the Natural Bridge, and Winchester in Virginia, crossed the corner of West Virginia to Harper's Ferry, then to Frederick, Maryland, and on through Lancaster to Philadelphia; there, he said, he remained four days, and returned by way of Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Zanesville, Chillicothe, Lexington and Louisville, to Henderson. He estimated the whole distance traversed at "nearly two thousand miles," and at a rate of "not less than forty miles a day." Much is said in praise of his favorite bay horse, and its food and daily treatment are duly recorded. This horse was very docile, and would wade swamps, swim rivers, and clear a rail fence like an elk; corn blades as well as corn and oats entered into his daily ration, to which a pumpkin and fresh eggs, when procurable, were occasionally added.

It was upon his return journey that the naturalist met with Vincent Nolte, who twelve years later did his chance acquaintance a good turn, when the latter was about to sail for England in 1826.[251] Nolte, said Audubon,