He visited Niagara, and gives a good account of the impressions which the
cataract made upon him. He did not cross the bridge to Goat Island on
account of the low state of his funds. In Buffalo he obtained a good dinner
of bread and milk for twelve cents, and went to bed cheering himself with
thoughts of other great men who had encountered greater hardships and had
finally achieved fame.

He soon left Buffalo, taking a deck passage on a schooner bound for Erie,
furnishing his own bed and provisions and paying a fare of one dollar and a
half. From Erie he and a fellow-traveller hired a man and cart to take them
to Meadville, paying their entertainers over night with music and portrait
drawing. Reaching Meadville, they had only one dollar and a half between
them, but soon replenished their pockets by sketching some of the leading
citizens.

Audubon's belief in himself helped him wonderfully. He knew that he had
talents, he insisted on using them. Most of his difficulties came from
trying to do the things he was not fitted to do. He did not hesitate to use
his talents in a humble way, when nothing else offered--portraits,
landscapes, birds and animals he painted, but he would paint the cabin
walls of the ship to pay his passage, if he was short of funds, or execute
crayon portraits of a shoemaker and his wife, to pay for shoes to enable
him to continue his journeys. He could sleep on a steamer's deck, with a
few shavings for a bed, and, wrapped in a blanket, look up at the starlit
sky, and give thanks to a Providence that he believed was ever guarding and
guiding him.

Early in September he left for Pittsburg where he spent one month scouring
the country for birds and continuing his drawings. In October, he was on
his way down the Ohio in a skiff, in company with "a doctor, an artist and