Discouraged by the gloomy prospects which their business at Louisville presented, Audubon and Rozier determined in the spring of 1810 to move 125 miles down the river to Henderson.[206] Loading the residue of their stock on a flatboat, they resolutely set out for the new field, but great was their surprise to find, in place of the thriving settlement which their imaginations had pictured, only a cluster of log houses on the river bank, with a population of less than 200 people and a demand for little else than whisky, gunpowder and coarse woolen goods. When the partners arrived, the little town was eighteen years old, as the first log cabins were built there in 1792, but the whole country above and below them was, and for a considerable time remained, one vast canebrake. All the commodities known to the pioneer store were scarce, but the people of Henderson were friendly, and the new settlers had been provident in bringing with them a goodly supply of flour and "bacon hams." Moreover, the Ohio, which was half a mile wide at that point, was well stocked with fish, and the woods and canebrakes were alive with birds, not to speak of larger and more important game. Not many years before, wild turkeys had been so plentiful that they were not sold but were given away, while a large buck deer could be bought in the season for fifty cents.
During their stay at Henderson, Rozier was in his habitual place behind the counter and attended to what little business was done, while Audubon with a Kentucky lad named John Pope, who was nominally a clerk, roamed the country in eager pursuit of rare birds, and with rod and gun bountifully supplied the table. Audubon's first abode in the town was, as he said, "a log-cabin, not a log-house," in which the richest piece of furniture was their child's cradle. He soon began to cultivate a garden, but his experience in horticulture must have been limited, for he naïvely remarks that the rankness of the soil kept the seeds they planted "far beneath the tall weeds which sprang up the first year."
Financial distress and hard times were already being felt in the Blue Grass State, and these conditions were not destined soon to improve. After experimenting for six months, or more, at Henderson, our two "rolling stones" determined to push still farther west and try their luck at a more promising point. They had hoped to reach St. Louis but finally went instead to Ste. Geneviève, then a small French settlement in Upper Louisiana, on the right bank of the Mississippi, a hundred miles north of the mouth of the Ohio.
This new venture promised to be both hazardous and uncertain, and as Mrs. Audubon and Rozier were not on the friendliest terms, Audubon decided to leave his family at Henderson, where a home for his wife and infant son could always be had under the hospitable roof of Dr. Adam Rankin, who became one of the naturalist's staunchest friends. If their stock in trade at this time actually consisted of "three hundred barrels of whisky, sundry dry-goods and powder," as Audubon affirmed, the keel boat which they then engaged was certainly calculated to bear a goodly load.[207] At all events the partners, with young Pope, their clerk, set out bravely, in a snow storm, in December, 1810. They floated with the current at a rate of about five miles an hour, while they helped their craft along by means of four oars in her bow and steered it with the aid of a slender tree trunk, "shaped at its outer extremity like the fin of a dolphin."
This journey of upwards of 165 miles lasted altogether more than nine weeks. It proved adventurous enough, but it was of no use to Audubon except in furnishing him with drawings of new birds and the raw materials for many "Episodes." The journal of his experiences on the great rivers during that eventful winter of 1810 and 1811 is interesting for the sidelights which it throws both upon his character and upon the state of the country at an elder day. Held up by the ice for several weeks at Cash Creek, near the mouth of the Ohio, to his own delight but to Rozier's sorrow, Audubon tramped the country and hunted wild swans and larger game with the friendly Shawnee Indians. "When one day's sport was over," he said, "we counted more than fifty of these beautiful birds whose skins were intended for the ladies of Europe. There were plenty of geese and ducks, but no one condescended to give them a shot." This was Audubon in 1810, when such "sport" was regarded as legitimate enough, and the feather-hunting of such Indians was not considered the nefarious trade that it proved to be. If we shift the scene to twenty years later, when William MacGillivray needed thousands of specimens of American birds for his studies upon their anatomy and variability, we find Audubon supplying him liberally, but he could not then bear to see them killed wantonly or for mere sport; more than once, out of compassion for individual birds that he chanced to be studying, whether in Florida or in Labrador, he would not permit them to be shot even when needed for his collections.
At the Shawnee Indian camp, to relate a characteristic anecdote, Audubon noticed that a squaw who "had been delivered of beautiful twins during the night" was busied on the next day at her usual task of tanning deer skins. "She cut two vines," his record reads, "at the roots of opposite trees and made a cradle of the bark, in which the new born ones were wafted to and fro with a push of her hand, while from time to time she gave them the breast, and was apparently as unconcerned as if the event had not taken place."
When at last our adventurers gained the Mississippi, the mighty volume of which was running three miles an hour, the patron ordered all hands ashore to pull at the bow rope. This characteristic remark of the naturalist is delightful, as showing the "single eye" which it has been declared of old shall be "full of light": "we made," said Audubon, "seven miles a day up the famous river; but while I was tugging with my back at the cordella, I kept my eyes fixed on the forests or the ground, looking for birds or curious shells."
Warping against the current was both difficult and dangerous, and though they rose two hours before the sun, they could make but one mile an hour or ten miles in the day. At night they would go ashore, light a good fire and cook their supper; then, after posting a sentinel to guard against unfriendly surprises, they would roll in their buffalo skins and sleep without further concern. Notwithstanding all their efforts, when they reached the Great Bend at Tawapatee Bottom, they were obliged to unship their cargo, protect their boat as best they could from being crushed in the growing pack, and await the final breaking up of the ice. "The sorrows of Rozier," at this dismal announcement, said Audubon, "were too great to be described; wrapped in a blanket, like a squirrel in winter quarters with his tail about his nose, he slept and dreamed his time away, being seldom seen except at meals." There was not a white man's cabin within twenty miles, but a new field opened to the naturalist, who tramped through the deep forests, and soon became acquainted with all the Indian trails and lakes in the neighborhood.
The six weeks spent at this camp passed pleasantly for Audubon, who devoted much of the time in studying the Osage Indians, whom he thought superior to the Shawnees, as well as in watching for wolves, bears, deer, cougars, racoons and wild turkeys, some of which were attracted by the bones and scraps of food thrown out for them: "I drew," said he, "more or less, by the side of our great camp-fire, every day." While detained at this point, they used for bread the breasts of turkeys, buttered with bear's grease, and opossum and bear's meat, until their stomachs revolted and they longed for a little Indian meal, which was procured only with the greatest difficulty.
When at last the ice broke up, splitting with reports like the thunder of heavy artillery, their prospects were dismal indeed, for their boat was immediately jammed by the rushing ice, and they were powerless to move her. "While we were gazing on the scene," to continue Audubon's record, "a tremendous crash was heard, which seemed to have taken place about a mile below, when suddenly the great dam gave way. The current of the Mississippi had forced its way against that of the Ohio, and in less than four hours we witnessed the complete breaking up of the ice." Having reloaded their goods, they were ready to start at a favorable moment, and taking leave of the friendly Indians, "as when brothers part," they pushed on through the floating ice, past Cape Girardeau, to Sainte Geneviève, a town which Audubon characterized as "not so large as dirty," declaring that the time spent there did not yield him half the pleasure he had felt at Tawapatee Bottom. It was near a granite tower which rose from a dangerous rock in the river below Ste. Geneviève that Audubon caught sight of what he afterwards described as "Washington's Eagle," a bird now believed to have been the true "bird of freedom," the "Bald-" or White-headed Eagle, but in an immature state.