This made, as I have said, a very deep impression on my youthful mind. But now, my dear children, I must tell you somewhat of my father, and of his parentage.
John Audubon, my grandfather, was born and lived at the small village of Sable d'Olhonne, and was by trade a very humble fisherman. He appears to have made up for the want of wealth by the number of his children, twenty-one of whom he actually raised to man and womanhood. All were sons, with one exception; my aunt, one uncle, and my father, who was the twentieth son, being the only members of that extraordinary numerous family who lived to old age. In subsequent years, when I visited Sable d'Olhonne, the old residents assured me that they had seen the whole family, including both parents, at church many times.
When my father had reached the age of twelve years, his father presented him with a shirt, a dress of coarse material, a stick, and his blessing, and urged him to go and seek means for his future support and sustenance.
Some kind whaler or cod-fisherman took him on board as a "Boy." Of his life during his early voyages it would be useless to trouble you; let it suffice for me to say that they were of the usual most uncomfortable nature. How many trips he made I cannot say, but he told me that by the time he was seventeen he had become an able seaman before the mast; when twenty-one he commanded a fishing-smack, and went to the great Newfoundland Banks; at twenty-five he owned several small crafts, all fishermen, and at twenty-eight sailed for Santo Domingo with his little flotilla heavily loaded with the produce of the deep. "Fortune," said he to me one day, "now began to smile upon me. I did well in this enterprise, and after a few more voyages of the same sort gave up the sea, and purchased a small estate on the Isle à Vaches;[1] the prosperity of Santo Domingo was at its zenith, and in the course of ten years I had realized something very considerable. The then Governor gave me an appointment which called me to France, and having received some favors there, I became once more a seafaring man, the government having granted me the command of a small vessel of war."[2]
