I.


There is a hopeless confusion as to certain important dates in Audubon's
life. He was often careless and unreliable in his statements of matters of
fact, which weakness during his lifetime often led to his being accused of
falsehood. Thus he speaks of the "memorable battle of Valley Forge" and of
two brothers of his, both officers in the French army, as having perished
in the French Revolution, when he doubtless meant uncles. He had previously
stated that his only two brothers died in infancy. He confessed that he had
no head for mathematics, and he seems always to have been at sea in regard
to his own age. In his letters and journals there are several references to
his age, but they rarely agree. The date of his birth usually given, May 4,
1780, is probably three or four years too early, as he speaks of himself as
being nearly seventeen when his mother had him confirmed in the Catholic
Church, and this was about the time that his father, then an officer in the
French navy, was sent to England to effect a change of prisoners, which
time is given as 1801.

The two race strains that mingle in him probably account for this illogical
habit of mind, as well as for his romantic and artistic temper and tastes.

His father was a sea-faring man and a Frenchman; his mother was a Spanish
Creole of Louisiana--the old chivalrous Castilian blood modified by new
world conditions. The father, through commercial channels, accumulated a
large property in the island of St. Domingo. In the course of his trading
he made frequent journeys to Louisiana, then the property of the French
government. On one of these trips, probably, he married one of the native