Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/711

Rh the fruit of years of labor and of almost exclusive preoccupation during the whole time, were destroyed in a single night by rats. He went to work at once, however, to restore his drawings, and did so. Mr. McMurtrie, the conchologist, advised him to take his drawings to England. Prince Canino advised him to go to France. He proceeded to New York, having left Philadelphia "free from debt and free from anxiety about the future." In New York he visited the museum and "found the specimens of stuffed birds set up in unnatural and constrained attitudes. This appears to be tbe universal practice, and the world owes to me the adoption of the plan of drawings from animated nature. Wilson is the only one who has in any tolerable degree adopted my plan."

The prospect for having his drawings published in New York did not appear very encouraging, although it seemed more hopeful than it had been in Philadelphia. He visited the Lyceum, and his portfolio was examined by the members of the Institute, among whom, he writes, "I felt awkward and uncomfortable." After living among such people I felt clouded and depressed; remember that I have done nothing, and fear that I may die unknown. I feel I am strange to all but the birds of America. In a few days I shall be in the woods and quite forgotten." On the next day: "My spirits low, and I long for the woods again; but the prospect of becoming known prompts me to remain another day." He was invited by the artist, Vanderlyn, to sit for a portrait of General Jackson, whom his figure was thought to resemble considerably.

From New York he proceeded up the Hudson and into the lake-region, visiting Niagara, but not crossing over to Goat Island on account of the low state of his finances; then returned by way of Erie, Pittsburg, and the rivers, to his home in Bayou Sara. His wife was receiving an income of nearly three thousand dollars a year from her labors in teaching, and he took charge of a class in dancing by which he cleared two thousand dollars; and with this capital and his wife's savings he was now able to foresee a successful issue to his great ornithological work.

He had determined upon going to England where, although he knew no one, he hoped that he might find a way to get his plates engraved. He sailed from New Orleans in May, 1826, and arrived in Liverpool on the 20th of July. He exhibited his pictures, with satisfaction to his visitors at Liverpool and Manchester, to their admiration at Edinburgh. He made friends of Herschel, Sir Walter Scott, and "Christopher North," who has left the record of his warm admiration for the man and his work in two of his essays, and of Cuvier, Humboldt, and Saint-Hilaire in France. He resolved to go on with the publication of his works, although his friends advised him that the risk was too great to venture upon. In 1827 he issued the prospectus of "The Birds of America," to be published in numbers of