While at Philadelphia Audubon paid this fine tribute to the ornithologist whom he had met at Louisville twenty-six years before, and whose name had long been a cover for the jealousies and animosities of supposititious friends: "Passed poor Alexander Wilson's schoolhouse, and heaved a sigh. Alas, poor Wilson! Would that I could once more speak to thee, and listen to thy voice!"
Audubon was planning during the coming year to explore the west coast of Florida, in company with his son and Edward Harris, and to proceed as far as possible along the coast of Texas. From Philadelphia he went to Baltimore, and on November 8 he arrived at Washington. His steadfast friend and supporter, Colonel John James Abert, then at the head of the Topographical Bureau, took him to the White House to call on President Andrew Jackson and present his letters. The General, said Audubon, looked well and was smoking a pipe; after reading his letters attentively, he said at once: "Mr. Audubon, I will do all in my power to serve you, but the Seminole war, will, I fear, prevent you from having a cutter; however, as we shall have a committee at twelve o'clock, we will consider this, and give you an answer tomorrow." Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, was as friendly as ever, and offered the party passage to Charleston on the Campbell, a vessel of fifty-five tons carrying three guns and twenty-one men, but Audubon, who was a poor sailor, preferred to travel by land and await the coming of this boat at the Bachman home. Before leaving the capital the naturalist and his son were invited to dine informally at the White House, and he had the opportunity of studying at close range "a man who had done much good and much evil to our country." Said Audubon of this dinner:
I sat close to him; we spoke of olden times, and touched slightly on politics, and I found him very averse to the cause of the Texans.... The dinner was what might be called plain and substantial in England; I dined from a fine young turkey, shot within twenty miles of Washington. The general drank no wine, but his health was drunk by us more than once; and he ate very moderately, his last dish consisting of bread and milk.[141]
Audubon, with his son, John, left Washington on the 10th of November, and after traveling six days on one of "the most extraordinary railroads in the world," they reached the city of Charleston, where, under the hospitable roof of John Bachman, the party eventually passed the winter, though momentarily expecting their vessel, which did not arrive. During this long interval of waiting, Audubon made drawings of all the new birds in the Nuttall-Townsend collection, representing upwards of seventy figures, and Miss Maria Martin, Bachman's sister-in-law, again assisted him in drawing plants and insects.
As spring approached and the long awaited Campbell had not arrived, Audubon, with Harris and John, started overland for New Orleans. After several days of hard traveling by coaches they reached Montgomery, and descended the Alabama River by steamboat to Mobile. When that district had been ransacked for birds, they went on to Pensacola, where they learned that the Government cutter would soon be at their service at New Orleans; accordingly they retraced their steps to Mobile, passed through the lakes, and entered the southern capital, the city in which the naturalist had nearly starved, a penniless stranger, sixteen years before, but which, less than three-quarters of a century later, was to raise a monument to his memory. He was still destined to a degree of disappointment, when it was learned that the Campbell could not be put in readiness before the last of March, but he was delighted to find that the old pilot of the Marion, Napoleon Coste, was to command this vessel. At New Orleans Audubon met for the last time "good M. Le Sueur," artist and naturalist, who had spent many years at New Harmony, Indiana, and whose acquaintance he had first made at Philadelphia in 1824.
Audubon and his party finally left New Orleans on the 1st of April and entered the Gulf by the Southwest Pass, where, on the 3rd of the month, they were joined by the Crusader, a schooner of twelve tons which was attached to the Revenue Service; on this journey she carried a crew of four, with as many guns, and acted as a tender to the larger vessel. The expedition was provisioned for two months, and aimed to explore the keys, bayous and shoreline from the Mississippi to the Bay of Galveston. Some of Audubon's experiences on this cruise were described in a letter to William MacGillivray,[142] dated "Côte Blanche, 18 April, 1837," which we will now reproduce:
Audubon to William MacGillivray
My Dear Friend,—
Being just now snugly anchored in a bay, the description of which may prove agreeable to you, I sit down to give you an account of what I have been doing since I last wrote to you.
After visiting "Rabbit Island," on which, as I have already told you, not a single Rabbit or Hare is to be seen, we made our way between it and Frisky Point, by a narrow and somewhat difficult channel leading to the bay in which I now write. The shores around us are entirely formed of a bank, from twenty to thirty feet high, and composed of concrete shells of various kinds, among which the Common Oyster, however, predominates. This bank, which at present looks as if bleached by the sunshine and rain of centuries, is so white that it well might form a guiding line to the vessels which navigate this bay even in the darkest nights. The bay, however, is so shallow, that it is rarely entered by vessels larger than schooners of about seventy tons burthen, which visit its shores to take in the sugars and cottons grown in the neighbouring country.