Under a Wild Sky (47 page)

The real “check” Lucy provided was in the person of Victor, whom she dispatched to London a few months later to oversee the engravings and subscriptions. Meanwhile, oblivious to Havell's protestations that he was doing his best, Lucy didn't let up.
She wrote again to Havell, admonishing him to be quicker about sending the latest Numbers to subscribers in America, who were now twenty-two and counting.

Audubon, Lehman, and Ward spent the balance of November and most of December exploring the area around St. Augustine. Most days they were up at dawn and then out into the marshes, first by boat and then slogging through mud and reeds on foot. Audubon found the birds abundant but wary. He had to paint anything he shot quickly before it spoiled
in the heat. Each evening when the birds returned to their roosts, Audubon and his companions went wearily back to town.

Audubon had begun to talk of his work on
The Birds of America
as if it were a kind of divine mission that had chosen him as much as the other way around.
Writing to a friend in Philadelphia, Audubon said he had suffered through a hard life, with many privations.
This was the lot of many men, but unlike other men, his work had become inseparable from who he was and what he was put on earth to accomplish: “The life I lead is my vocation, full of smooth and rough paths,” Audubon wrote. “My physical constitution has always been good, and the fine flow of spirits I have, has often greatly assisted me in some of the most trying passages of my life. I know that I am engaged in an arduous undertaking; but if I live to complete it, I will offer to my country a beautiful monument of the varied splendour of American nature, and of my devotion to American ornithology.”

So far, Audubon had shot and drawn about a dozen species of birds, including a vulturelike bird that seemed to belong to an unknown genus. Audubon, Lehman, and the indefatigable Henry Ward had also managed to stuff nearly four hundred bird skins.
Audubon had acquired a telescope, and this proved useful in observing water birds, which were often sighted in hard-to-reach places and tended to fly off before one could get close. Audubon wrote descriptions of everything each night, hoping that these accounts would find their place with little revision in
Ornithological Biography.
Audubon felt he had exhausted the area or soon would. In truth, much of what he saw disappointed him, from the scrubby desolation of the land to the indifferent shooting. If it could be managed, he hoped to travel on foot and by boat all the way down the eastern shore of Florida.
The land between the ocean and St. John's River, which ran parallel to the coast for most of the length of the peninsula, was said to be an untouched wilderness of waterways and forests that was home to a great many birds.

In mid-December of 1831, Audubon set out to the south, following the old King's Road, an overgrown remnant of a brief English presence in the area. He was intent on visiting some of the local plantations, which were few in number and mostly quite remote.
On Christmas day, about fifty miles below St. Augustine, Audubon and company walked down a long, sand-covered lane beneath a canopy of live oaks that arched high overhead, forming a darkening, moss-draped tunnel that led deep into the
forest. The narrow path rose and fell gently, and it seemed to Audubon and his companions that they were passing out of the known world and into the nether reaches of an utterly wild place. As they went, strange sounds, like the workings of heavy machinery, became discernible. After a considerable hike, the forest opened and they came into a glen on the banks of a clear, fast-running stream. On the opposite side of the creek was an expanse of rice fields and salt marshes. Overlooking the fields was a big, airy, two-story frame house that had a veranda encircling the upper floor. Ringing the clearing was a horseshoe of nearly fifty huts that served as slave quarters. Beyond these were fields of sugarcane as far as the eye could see. A few hundred yards into the forest stood the massive stone walls and spires of the largest steam-driven sugar mill in Florida, rising like a cathedral toward the roof of the jungle and belching smoke.

The stream was Bulow Creek, the plantation Bulow Plantation. It was owned by a twenty-five-year-old bachelor planter named John Bulow, who was more than happy to have company. Educated in Paris, Bulow was a worldly, enthusiastic young man who kept one of the best wine cellars in America.
Audubon remained there for several weeks. George Lehman, who was finding the Florida landscape more inspiring than Audubon found its birds, made drawings of the plantation, including a magnificent, ground-level view of the primordial salt marsh with the ghostly outlines of palms and moss-draped cypress in the distance that became the background for Audubon's portrait of the tell-tale godwit, or snipe.

Just before New Year's, Bulow provided Audubon with a boat and six slaves for a short expedition. Pushing off from the plantation's landing on Bulow Creek, they made their way to the Halifax River, which was here more like an inland arm of the sea. Audubon thought this was likely to be good brown pelican habitat, and he hoped to shoot as many as twenty-five of the wary birds—one to paint and the rest for skins. On the morning of the second day they traversed a shallow bay so dense with fish that the boat's progress was actually impeded by them. As they rounded a point, Audubon saw a stand of mangroves ahead, in which several hundred pelicans were roosting. Audubon ordered the rowers to backwater and put ashore. Leaping over the side, Audubon bent low and splashed ahead, keeping down behind a curtain of rushes until he got close. When he cautiously straightened up, Audubon saw that the birds were asleep and completely unaware of his presence. He watched them for a few minutes, trying to memorize their features. Finally he brought up his gun and fired.
Two fine specimens dropped. In the excitement, Audubon jammed his gun while reloading and had to content himself with just the two, as the rest of the flock rose into a blindingly blue sky and faded from sight.

As they started back, a northerly wind came up, lashing the river's surface into a frenzy and combining with the outrushing tide to drop the water level alarmingly. Feeling a steely cold coming behind the breeze, Audubon and Bulow implored the crew to pull hard at their oars. But at nightfall they ran aground, some three hundred yards away from a marshy shore that was hardly more solid than the shifting mudflat on which they were stuck. With little chance of moving and none of making a fire, the party wrapped themselves in their thin cloaks and hunkered down in the bottom of the boat, shaking and miserable. Audubon said it was the worst night of his life. The wind stayed up and it got colder and colder. No one could sleep. Every minute, Audubon said, felt like an hour.

When day at last broke, the crew seemed half dead. The wind had kept the tide from refloating the boat and there was nothing to be done but to get into the water and push it off. Audubon and Bulow looked at each other, and went over the side. The crew followed. “Push for your lives!” Bulow yelled. Aiming for a point where they could see a small grove of trees, the men shoved and dragged the boat forward at an agonizing pace. In places the black, oozing bottom of the bay rose to their chests. Audubon said he felt as if he were walking in chains. After more than two brutal hours of this, they reached the point. Two of Bulow's slaves immediately collapsed from hypothermia and exhaustion. They were dragged onto dry ground, where Audubon struck a fire. Most of the men could not even stand. Gradually, everyone warmed up and Audubon made some tea. But he knew they were far from safe. Audubon was certain the wind would not abate now, and that the next night would be colder still.

They got the boat floated and were so happy about it that some of the men stupidly lit the marsh afire. The flames sped off ahead of the wind and small animals poured out of the tall grass. Audubon paid them little attention. He was more worried about the low water in which they still found themselves. Sure enough, they ran aground again and were forced back into the freezing water to push. This happened several more times. Audubon and Bulow huddled. Where was the tide? They did not like their chances of making it home by water. They were too tired and too
cold, the boat too heavy. They decided to put ashore and strike out overland for the coast, hoping they could make it to the beach and walk back.

They abandoned the boat, packed Audubon's birds onto the backs of the crew, and began walking east, pushing their way through thickets of palmetto with frozen hands. At last they came to the beach. The ocean, Audubon said, looked “angry,” and thundered onto the “desolate and naked” sands. Turning left, the party trudged north, walking straight into the frigid wind. It was horrible. The men were stiff and fading fast. The beach was slanted and soft, forcing them to walk at an awkward gait. With each step, their feet sank far into the sand. Audubon said it felt more like wading than walking. Grim-faced and numb, the party kept on. Even the youthful Bulow appeared done in. Audubon kept one eye on him and the other on the sand beneath his feet, occasionally pausing to bend down to pick up a curious-looking shell. Somehow, they all made it back.

Audubon remained in Florida through early March of 1832, exploring the northeast corner of the state.
There was little reason to stay on, but Audubon and his companions lingered. Audubon had convinced the Department of the Treasury to allow his party to travel aboard United States revenue cutters patrolling against smugglers in the region. This unusual permission was an explicit acknowledgment of his growing stature, and Audubon was determined to take advantage of the opportunity. It seemed to confirm what he was now reading about himself, courtesy of the once-dreaded critics. Reviews of
The Birds of America
, almost universally flattering, now appeared regularly, and the papers up and down the Eastern Seaboard had started to notice Audubon's comings and goings.
During his first visit to Charleston, the
City Gazette and Daily Commercial Advertiser
had carried Bachman's effusive notice of his arrival there. Bachman had called him a “celebrated ornithologist, and the worthy successor of the adventurous and enthusiastic Wilson.”
In Philadelphia, the short-lived
Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural History
published several rave reviews of both
The Birds of America
and
Ornithological Biography
, quoting lengthy autobiographical passages from the latter.
In February, the
Philadelphia Gazette
reported that Audubon had collected hundreds of specimens in the South, including some new species—as well as the news from European sources that
The Birds of America
was “advancing rapidly toward completion.”

There were no revenue cutters in St. Augustine at the time, but Audubon used his authorization to board a U.S. man o' war, the schooner
Spark.
The
Spark
conveyed them back up the coast and into the St. John's River, which Audubon and company explored for some distance past Jacksonville. Audubon continued to find the birds and the land disappointing.
East Florida, he said, was a barren place, covered over with poor soils and ragged pine forests, the forbidding marshes and swamps the only productive areas. The weather was “unsteady,” he added, and the endless flat savannas were “unfit for civilization.”
William Bartram, who had thought this part of the world a Garden of Eden, had to be excused, Audubon said. He was, after all, a mere botanist.

Audubon had hoped the
Spark
would take him on down the East Coast to the Florida Keys and into the Gulf of Mexico, but bad weather prevented this.
Audubon went back to Charleston briefly, where he soon secured passage on the cutter
Marion
, which was to be at his disposal during a two-month deployment to Florida waters.
He wrote to Lucy, saying that this expedition would complete his work in Florida and the Audubon family would soon be together again. He now had more than one thousand bird skins. All he needed were the water birds he was sure to find farther south.
In April and May Audubon traveled down through the Keys and out to the Dry Tortugas. The islands, which may have reminded him of his distant childhood home at Saint-Domingue, were delightful. They had fine weather—with a few squalls—and he found the birds there much more plentiful than they had been near St. Augustine.
He even saw flamingos, though he never did manage to shoot one and eventually had to make his drawing of the bird—to many people today the most recognizable of all Audubon paintings—from a skin shipped to him in England.

In Louisville, Lucy monitored Audubon's southern adventures with growing irritation. She'd had enough of long separations. And with Victor soon headed off to England to take charge of the engravings and subscriptions, she was determined that the family not remain any more scattered than necessary.
Although both of the boys had grown into responsible young men, Lucy had been mortified at the modest livings they were eking out in Louisville, barely enough to keep themselves clothed and fed. Johnny, in particular, seemed to be suffering and was often under
the weather with minor illnesses Lucy believed were the consequence of too much hard work and too little reward.

Lucy wrote to Audubon, thanking him for the letters he managed to send her from such a “dismal” place as Florida. But she wanted him home. “Why are you in that desolate region?” she asked. “When there are no new birds why remain? Do not let enthusiasm make you quite forget what is due to yourself, to your family, and depend upon it my love the World will never repay either your toil, your privation or your expense.”

“Do come away,” she said.

Lucy was also concerned that their lengthening absence from London put
The Birds of America
in jeopardy. Subscribers were once again lagging in payments.
Audubon's funds, as Lucy pointedly put it, were “not accumulating.” And of all the places in the world to linger while his great project went on without him, surely Florida was the worst.
“Do come home,” Lucy said again, “and put us all at ease. I assure you I regret more every day that I did not go straight down and resume my labours in the South; but now I wait most anxiously your replies, or your presence. How you can think of remaining in the South so late I cannot conceive, when you reflect that you have been in Europe so long and the South never agreed with you?”