Famous Men of Science

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

The "Birds of America" received good reviews in "Blackwood's Magazine," and elsewhere. Audubon said, "I have balanced my accounts with the 'Birds of America,' and the whole business is really wonderful; forty thousand dollars have passed through my hands for the completion of the first volume. Who would believe that a lonely individual, who landed in England without a friend in the whole country, and with only sufficient pecuniary means to travel through it as a visitor, could have accomplished such a task as this publication! Who would believe that once, in London, Audubon had only one sovereign left in his pocket, and did not know of a single individual to whom he could apply to borrow another, when he was on the verge of failure in the very beginning of his undertaking! And, above all, who would believe that he extricated himself from all his difficulties, not by borrowing money, but by rising at four o'clock in the morning, working hard all day, and disposing of his works at a price which a common laborer would have thought little more than sufficient remuneration for his work!"

In the four years required to bring out the work, fifty-six of his subscribers, representing the sum of fifty-six thousand dollars, abandoned him, and he was obliged to leave London, and go into the provinces to supply their places.

September 3, 1831, Audubon returned to America, spent the winter in Eastern Florida, searching for birds and animals, and then some months in Labrador, having sent Victor to England to superintend the engraving of the drawings. In Labrador he collected one hundred and seventy-three skins of birds, and studied carefully the habits of the eider-duck, loons, wild geese, and other birds. Sometimes he was so weary from drawing that "my neck and shoulders, and most of all my fingers, have ached from the fatigue. The fact is, I am growing old too fast, alas! I feel it, and yet work I will, and may God grant me life to see the last plate of my mammoth work finished.

"Labrador is so grandly wild and desolate," he said, "that I am charmed by its wonderful dreariness.... And yet how beautiful it is now, when your eye sees the wild bee, moving from one flower to another in search of food, which doubtless is as sweet to her as the essence of the orange and magnolia is to her more favored sister in 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 your ears ever and anon; the crowds of sea-birds in search of places wherein to repose or to feed."

On his return from Labrador, he went to Philadelphia, where he was arrested for one of his old partnership debts, and would have been taken to prison except for a friend who kindly offered bail. From here he went to the house of an old friend, Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, S. C., whose two daughters subsequently married the two sons of Audubon, Victor and John. He returned to London, and in 1834 and 1835 published the second and third volumes of the "Ornithological Biography."

In 1836 he came back to America for further research, and received a warm welcome from distinguished men. Daniel Webster and Washington Irving became his earnest friends. The latter said that his work "was highly creditable to the nation," and deserved "national patronage." He dined with Andrew Jackson at the White House. On his return to England he wrote the fourth volume of the "Ornithological Biography," and the fifth the following year.

This year, 1839, he returned to America to spend the rest of his life, purchased a home on the banks of the Hudson in upper New York, which he called "Minnie's Land," the Scotch word for mother, this being the name by which he generally addressed his wife, to whom he left the whole of it at his death.

He was now sixty, but his work was not done. He immediately began to bring out his "Birds of America" in seven octavo volumes, with the figures reduced and lithographed. He exhibited in New York his wonderful collection of drawings, several thousands of birds and animals, all the size of life, by his own hands.

In 1843, taking his son Victor, he started on an expedition to the Yellowstone River, to collect animals and drawings for another great work, the "Quadrupeds of North America." After nearly a year he returned, and began his book. In two years the first volume was ready; but after this he could do no more. The rest of the great work was finished by his sons after his death.

In 1848 the quick, active mind failed. His wife read to him, led him like a child, and at the last fed him. One, at least, had never failed him, since the day when she gave the money she earned to send him to Europe to win renown.