Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/160

128 the birds themselves: "After all, there's nothing perfect but primitiveness." Finding that he could not live in the city, in 1842 Audubon removed with his family to "Minnie's Land," on the banks of the Hudson, now known as Audubon Park, and included in the city limits; this became his final home. In the spring of 1843 he started on his last long journey, his trip to the Yellowstone River, of which we have a minute account in his "Missouri River Journals"—documents that lay hidden in the back of an old secretary from 1843 to the time when they were found by his grand-daughters in 1896, and published by them in 1897. This trip was undertaken mainly in the interests of the Quadrupeds and Biography of American Quadrupeds, and much of what he saw and did is woven into those three volumes. The trip lasted eight months, and the hardships