This partner now appears upon the scene at Hendersonville and persuades
Audubon to erect, at a heavy outlay, a steam grist and saw mill, and to
take into the firm an Englishman by the name of Pease.

This enterprise brought fresh disaster. "How I laboured at this infernal
mill, from dawn till dark, nay, at times all night."

They also purchased a steamboat which was so much additional weight to drag
them down. This was about the year 1817. From this date till 1819,
Audubon's pecuniary difficulties increased daily. He had no business talent
whatever; he was a poet and an artist; he cared not for money, he wanted to
be alone with Nature. The forests called to him, the birds haunted his
dreams.

His father dying in 1818, left him a valuable estate in France, and
seventeen thousand dollars, deposited with a merchant in Richmond,
Virginia; but Audubon was so dilatory in proving his identity and his legal
right to this cash, that the merchant finally died insolvent, and the
legatee never received a cent of it. The French estate he transferred in
after years to his sister Rosa.




III.


Finally, Audubon gave up the struggle of trying to be a business man. He
says: "I parted with every particle of property I had to my creditors,
keeping only the clothes I wore on that day, my original drawings, and my