Drawing all day; finished the female Grouse and five young, and prepared the male bird. The captain, John, and Lincoln, went off this afternoon with a view to camp on a bay about ten miles distant. Soon after, we had a change of weather, and, for a wonder, bright lightning and something like summer clouds. When fatigued with drawing I went on shore for exercise, and saw many pretty flowers, amongst them a flowering Sea-pea, quite rich in color.... The mosquitoes quite as numerous as in Louisiana.
On July 14 the Ripley took the party forty-three miles farther east to Little Maccatina, or Hare Harbor, as it is called today, where they remained until July 21, proceeding thence to Baie de Portage. Here they were able to enter their small boats, and visited the captain of a whaling schooner from New Brunswick, a Canadian trapper, and a Scotchman, Samuel Robertson by name, who was engaged in the sealing industry at Sparr Point, all of whom Audubon pumped for information on the country and its products. On July 25, they started for "Chevalier's Settlement," but were caught in a storm, and came to in Bras d'Or (Bradore) Bay; there they found the Labrador Duck, which in 1875, but forty-two years later, had become totally extinct.
At the approach of August the brief Labrador summer, of barely one month, was drawing to a close, and Audubon was exerting his utmost efforts to accomplish his purposes. Under date of August 10 he wrote:[39]
My reason for not writing at night is that I have been drawing so constantly, often seventeen hours a day, that the weariness of my body at night has been unprecedented, by such work at least. At times I felt as if my physical powers would abandon me; my neck, my shoulders, and, more than all, my fingers, were almost useless through actual fatigue at drawing. Who would believe this? Yet, nothing is more true. When at the return of dawn my spirits called me out of my berth, my body seemed to beg my mind to suffer it to rest a while longer; and as dark forced me to lay aside my brushes I immediately went to rest as if I had walked sixty-five miles that day, as I have done a few times in my stronger days. Yesternight, when I rose from my little seat to contemplate my work and to judge of the effect of it compared with the nature which I had been attempting to copy, it was the affair of a moment; instead of waiting, as I always like to do, until the hazy darkness which is to me the best time to judge of the strength of light and shade, I went at once to rest as if delivered from the heaviest task I ever performed. The young men think my fatigue is added to by the fact that I often work in wet clothes, but I have done that all my life with no ill effects. No! no! it is that I am no longer young. But I thank God that I did accomplish my task; my drawings are finished to the best of my ability, (and) the skins well prepared by John.
On the 11th of August all hands parted with Labrador without regret, and the captain of the Ripley steered for Newfoundland, where they landed in St. George's Harbor on the 13th. That region was searched for five days, when a fresh start was made for Pictou, Nova Scotia, but when they encountered head winds, Audubon and his party were landed on the nearest shore and made their way overland to the town. Thence they proceeded to Truro and Halifax, and after three days went on to Windsor, where they watched the famous tides in the Bay of Fundy—emptying and filling a broad river, and rising, in course, to a height of sixty-five feet. From that point a steamboat was taken to St. Johns, New Brunswick, where the faithful Harris awaited the naturalist with tidings of his wife and elder son;[40] this intelligence induced him to abandon his contemplated course through the woods of Quebec and hasten back to the United States. The party finally reached Eastport on August 31, after being out nearly twelve weeks. When the Ripley had docked and their collections were securely packed, all but Coolidge and Lincoln returned to Boston, and on September 7 Audubon was again in New York.
The Labrador experience was in a measure disappointing, but the naturalist brought back twenty-three large drawings of birds, complete or nearly so, and seventy-three bird skins, as well as considerable collections of marine animals and plants. The expenses of the journey had been heavy, amounting, as he told his son, to "about $2,000," but one fine morning when they had flushed a Black Poll Warbler from its nest, Audubon felt that he was amply "refunded in the sight," though this bird was later found to have a much wider breeding range than he then supposed.
The National Gazette of Philadelphia[41] published a long editorial upon Audubon's return, as well as an extended account of his journey, extracted from the Boston Patriot. To quote the editor's comment:
The distinguished naturalist returned from his northeastern excursion to Boston Wednesday last. We believe that there is no one who will not be gratified to learn the progress of his arduous and unremitted labors in a branch of science, which he has made peculiarly his own; and he has kindly favored us with information on the subject of his recent tour, which we are glad to lay before our readers; regretting only that we are unable to present it in his own rich and animated language, and to invest it with the attractions which it would derive from his own descriptive powers.
