The entire cost of the "Birds" exceeded one hundred thousand dollars, yet the author never faltered in this gigantic undertaking.
On August 2, Audubon and his wife sailed for America, and landed in New York on September 4. They at once went to Louisville where the wife remained with her sons, while the husband went to Florida where the winter of 1831-2 was spent, prosecuting his studies of our birds. His adventures and experiences in Florida, he has embodied in his Floridian Episodes, "The Live Oakers," "Spring Garden," "Deer Hunting," "Sandy Island," "The Wreckers," "The Turtles," "Death of a Pirate," and other sketches. Stopping at Charleston, South Carolina, on this southern trip, he made the acquaintance of the Reverend John Bachman, and a friendship between these two men was formed that lasted as long as they both lived. Subsequently, Audubon's sons, Victor and John, married Dr. Bachman's two eldest daughters.
In the summer of 1832, Audubon, accompanied by his wife and two sons, made a trip to Maine and New Brunswick, going very leisurely by private conveyance through these countries, studying the birds, the people, the scenery, and gathering new material for his work. His diaries give minute accounts of these journeyings. He was impressed by the sobriety of the people of Maine; they seem to have had a "Maine law" at that early date; "for on asking for brandy, rum, or whiskey, not a drop could I obtain." He saw much of the lumbermen and was a deeply interested spectator of their ways and doings. Some of his best descriptive passages are contained in these diaries.
In October he is back in Boston planning a trip to Labrador, and intent on adding more material to his "Birds" by another year in his home country.
That his interests abroad in the meantime might not suffer by being entirely in outside hands, he sent his son Victor, now a young man of considerable business experience, to England to represent him there. The winter of 1832 and 1833 Audubon seems to have spent mainly in Boston, drawing and re-drawing and there he had his first serious illness.
In the spring of 1833, a schooner was chartered and, accompanied by five young men, his youngest son, John Woodhouse, among them, Audubon started on his Labrador trip, which lasted till the end of summer. It was an expensive and arduous trip, but was greatly enjoyed by all hands, and was fruitful in new material for his work. Seventy-three bird skins were prepared, many drawings made, and many new plants collected.
The weather in Labrador was for the most part rainy, foggy, cold, and windy, and his drawings were made in the cabin of his vessel, often under great difficulties. He makes this interesting observation upon the Eider duck: "In one nest of the Eider ten eggs were found; this is the most we have seen as yet in any one nest. The female draws the down from her abdomen as far toward her breast as her bill will allow her to do, but the feathers are not pulled, and on examination of several specimens, I found these well and regularly planted, and cleaned from their original down, as a forest of trees is cleared of its undergrowth. In this state the female is still well clothed, and little or no difference can be seen in the plumage, unless examined."
He gives this realistic picture of salmon fishermen that his party saw in Labrador: "On going to a house on the shore, we found it a tolerably good cabin, floored, containing a good stove, a chimney, and an oven at the bottom of this, like the ovens of the French peasants, three beds, and a table whereon the breakfast of the family was served. This consisted of coffee in large bowls, good bread, and fried salmon. Three Labrador dogs came and sniffed about us, and then returned under the table whence they had issued, with no appearance of anger. Two men, two women, and a babe formed the group, which I addressed in French. They were French-Canadians and had been here several years, winter and summer, and are agents for the Fur and Fish Co., who give them food, clothes, and about $80 per annum. They have a cow and an ox, about an acre of potatoes planted in sand, seven feet of snow in winter, and two-thirds less salmon than was caught here ten years since. Then, three hundred barrels was a fair season; now one hundred is the maximum; this is because they will catch the fish both ascending and descending the river. During winter the men hunt Foxes, Martens, and Sables, and kill some bear of the black kind, but neither Deer nor other game is to be found without going a great distance in the interior, where Reindeer are now and then procured. One species of Grouse, and one of Ptarmigan, the latter white at all seasons; the former, I suppose to be, the Willow Grouse. The men would neither sell nor give us a single salmon, saying, that so strict were their orders that, should they sell one, the place might be taken from them. If this should prove the case everywhere, I shall not purchase many for my friends. The furs which they collect are sent off to Quebec at the first opening of the waters in spring, and not a skin of any sort was here for us to look at."
He gives a vivid picture of the face of Nature in Labrador on a fine day, under date of July 2: "A beautiful day for Labrador. Drew another M. articus. Went on shore, and was most pleased with what I saw. The country, so wild and grand, is of itself enough to interest any one in its wonderful dreariness. Its mossy, grey-clothed rocks, heaped and thrown together as if by chance, in the most fantastical groups imaginable, huge masses hanging on minor ones as if about to roll themselves down from their doubtful-looking situations, into the depths of the sea beneath. Bays without end, sprinkled with rocky islands of all shapes and sizes, where in every fissure a Guillemot, a Cormorant, or some other wild bird retreats to secure its egg, and raise its young, or save itself from the hunter's pursuit. The peculiar cast of the sky, which never seems to be certain, butterflies flitting over snowbanks, probing beautiful dwarf flowerets of many hues, pushing their tender, stems from the thick bed of moss which everywhere covers the granite rocks. Then the morasses, wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking over the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, making one think that as he goes he treads down the forests of Labrador. The unexpected Bunting, or perhaps Sylvia, which, perchance, and indeed as if by chance alone, you now and then see flying before you, or hear singing from the creeping plants on the ground. The beautiful freshwater lakes, on the rugged crests of greatly elevated islands, wherein the Red and Black-necked Divers swim as proudly as swans do in other latitudes, and where the fish appear to have been cast as strayed beings from the surplus food of the ocean. All—all is wonderfully grand, wild—aye, and terrific. And yet how beautiful it is now, when one sees the wild bee, moving from one flower to another in search of food, which doubtless is as sweet to it, as the essence of the magnolia is to those of favoured Louisiana. The little Ring Plover rearing its delicate and tender young, the Eider Duck swimming man-of-war-like amid her floating brood, like the guardship of a most valuable convoy; the White-crowned Bunting's sonorous note reaching the ear ever and anon; the crowds of sea birds in search of places wherein to repose or to feed—how beautiful is all this in this wonderful rocky desert at this season, the beginning of July, compared with the horrid blasts of winter which here predominate by the will of God, when every rock is rendered smooth with snows so deep that every step the traveller takes is as if entering into his grave; for even should he escape an avalanche, his eye dreads to search the horizon, for full well he knows that snow—snow is all that can be seen. I watched the Ring Plover for some time; the parents were so intent on saving their young that they both lay on the rocks as if shot, quivering their wings and dragging their bodies as if quite disabled. We left them and their young to the care of the Creator. I would not have shot one of the old ones, or taken one of the young for any consideration, and I was glad my young men were as forbearing. The L. marinus is extremely abundant here; they are forever harassing every other bird, sucking their eggs, and devouring their young; they take here the place of Eagles and Hawks; not an Eagle have we seen yet, and only two or three small Hawks, and one small Owl; yet what a harvest they would have here, were there trees for them to rest upon."
On his return from Labrador in September, Audubon spent three weeks in New York, after which with his wife, he started upon another southern trip, pausing at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond. In Washington he made some attempts to obtain permission to accompany a proposed expedition to the Rocky Mountains, under Government patronage. But the cold and curt manner in which Cass, then Secretary of War, received his application, quite disheartened him. But he presently met Washington Irving, whose friendly face and cheering words revived his spirits. How one would like a picture of that meeting in Washington between Audubon and Irving—two men who in so many ways were kindred spirits!