Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/58

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JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

Ohio in a flatboat in company with several other young emigrant families. The voyage occupied twelve days and was no doubt made good use of by Audubon in observing the wild nature along shore.

In Louisville, he and Rozier opened a large store which promised well. But Audubon's heart was more and more with the birds, and his business more and more neglected. Rozier attended to the counter, and, Audubon says, grew rich, but he himself spent most of the time in the woods or hunting with the planters settled about Louisville, between whom and himself a warm attachment soon sprang up. He was not growing rich, but he was happy. "I shot, I drew, I looked on Nature only," he says, "and my days were happy beyond human conception, and beyond this I really cared not."

He says that the only part of the commercial business he enjoyed was the ever engaging journeys which he made to