Page:John James Audubon (Burroughs).djvu/79

Rh lessons, painting birds, and wandering about the country, began again. His earnings proving inadequate to support the family, his wife took a position as governess in the family of a Mr. Brand.

In the spring, acting upon the judgment of his wife, he concluded to leave New Orleans again, and to try his fortunes elsewhere. He paid all his bills and took steamer for Natchez, paying his passage by drawing a crayon portrait of the captain and his wife. On the trip up the Mississippi, two hundred of his bird portraits were sorely damaged by the breaking of a bottle of gunpowder in the chest in which they were being conveyed.

Three times in his career he met with disasters to his drawings. On the occasion of his leaving Hendersonville to go to Philadelphia, he had put two hundred of his original drawings in a wooden box and had left them in charge of a friend. On his return, several