SCENE ON BAYOU SARA CREEK, AUDUBON'S HUNTING GROUND IN 1821.
This and the above after photographs by Mr. Stanley Clisby Arthur, 1916.
In passing up the Mississippi from New Orleans, the topography of the country suddenly changes at about this point; in the parish of West Feliciana the alluvial lowlands of the river valley give place to beautiful highlands, which still harbor as rich and distinctive a flora and fauna as in Audubon's day. Following Audubon's course in June, 1916, or ninety-five years later, Mr. Arthur found the region about St. Francisville wonderfully rich in birds, and there noted seventy-eight resident kinds which were seen on the same day, from shortly before noon to seven o'clock in the evening.
Upon reaching the plantation house, Audubon and his companion were kindly received by the Scotchman, James Pirrie, who introduced to them his daughter, Eliza, then a beautiful and talented girl of seventeen—"my lovely Miss Pirrie, of Oakley," as Audubon once characterized her in his journal—who was to become his pupil in drawing, and who, as after events proved, was destined to a romantic and checkered career.
The "Oakley" house, which by a strange turn of fortune's wheel thus became the naturalist's home in the summer of 1821, has changed but little since that time, but the century that has nearly sped its course has added strength and beauty to the moss-hung oaks which now encompass it and temper the heat of the southern sun in the double-decked galleries which adorn its whole front. Built of the enduring cypress, as my correspondent remarks, the house stands as firm and sound as the gaunt but living sentinels of that order which tower from the brake not far away.
Audubon spent nearly five months at the Pirrie estate. He worked with great ardor at his Ornithology and produced the originals of many of his plates that were afterwards published, while his assistant, Joseph Mason, who had followed him from Cincinnati, labored with equal diligence at the plants that were chosen as a setting for the birds.[286] An early drawing of the Chuck Will's Widow is dated "Red River, June, 1821," and it is probable that he followed this stream into Arkansas, for on leaving Cincinnati in the autumn of the previous year, he had planned to enter that State, and later references in his journals clearly imply that this object was attained. Another favorite hunting ground was Thompson's Creek, and he often recalled its heated banks, where, on a Fourth of July, he once satisfied his hunger by "swallowing the roasted eggs of a large soft shelled turtle."
On August 11, 1821, while Audubon was living at "Oakley," he made this entry in his journal:
Watched all night by the dead body of a friend of Mrs. P——; he was not known to me, and he had literally drunk himself to an everlasting sleep. Peace to his soul! I made a good sketch of his head, as a present for his poor wife. On such occasions time flies very slow indeed, so much so that it looked as if it stood still, like the hawk that poises over its prey.