CHAPTER XV

EXPERIMENTS IN TRADE ON THE FRONTIER

The Ohio a hundred years ago—Hardships of the pioneer trader—Audubon's long journeys by overland trail or river to buy goods—The "ark" and keelboat—Chief pleasures of the naturalist at Louisville—The partners move their goods by flatboat to Henderson, Kentucky, and then to Ste. Geneviève, (Missouri)—Held up by the ice—Adventures with the Indians—Mississippi in flood—Camp at the Great Bend—Abundance of game—Breaking up of the ice—Settle at Ste. Geneviève—The partnership dissolved—Audubon's return to Henderson—Rozier's successful career—His old store at Ste. Geneviève.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the banks of the Ohio River were but thinly settled, and over vast areas the virgin forest still reigned in undisturbed vigor and beauty. Yet traders were eagerly pushing westward in ever growing numbers, and by 1810 Audubon and Rozier found that competition at Louisville was already keen. This city, wrote Alexander Wilson in describing his experiences in the spring of that year, was as large as Frankfort, and possessed a number of good brick buildings and valuable shops; it would have been salubrious, he thought, "but for the numerous swamps and ponds that intersect the woods in its neighborhood," and the indifference of the people, whom he found too intent upon making money to give any heed to the drainage and sanitation of their town.

The prosperity of the partners, as already intimated, was shortlived. Audubon was doubtless right in admitting that his business abandoned him because he could not bear to give it the necessary attention. The conditions of life for the merchant-trader at that early day were at best far from easy, and an honest success, as then understood, required not only plenty of rough work but careful planning as well. His goods, purchased in the East, were laboriously transported across the State of Pennsylvania, and if they came from Philadelphia they must needs traverse the rough wagon roads that led through Bedford to Pittsburgh. There was an overland trail from Pittsburgh to Kentucky, but merchants with heavy loads would naturally take the easier river route. In going east to renew his stock in trade, it was a common practice to travel on horseback from as far west as St. Louis, but on returning the merchant would often sell his mount at Baltimore, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, where a boat could be taken for the remainder of the journey.

The "ark" or flatboat was considered most convenient for the transportation of either passengers or merchandise down the Ohio, for any well-to-do traveler, while floating leisurely with the current, could make himself comfortable by fitting up snug sleeping quarters and a kitchen on deck, and could go ashore at will, with the certainty of satisfying his appetite for wild turkey, venison and other game in the season. Wilson, who descended the river in April, 1810, boarded and passed many of these "arks," which he described as built in the form of a parallelogram, from twelve to fourteen feet wide and from forty to seventy feet long, with a canopy to protect them from the weather; they were casually helped along by means of two oars in the bow, and steered by another and more powerful one in the stern. "Several of these floating caravans," said Wilson, "were loaded with store goods for the supply of the settlements through which they passed, having a counter erected, shawls, muslins," and the like, "displayed, and everything ready for transacting business. On approaching a settlement they blew a tin trumpet, which announced to the inhabitants their arrival." These "arks," he added, descended from all parts of the Ohio and its tributary streams, but in greatest numbers in the spring months. Although they cost originally about $1.50 per foot of length, when arrived at their destination they would seldom bring more than one-sixth of that amount. From forty to fifty days were commonly required to cover the entire distance of two thousand miles from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.

Another means of conveyance on the river, frequently used by Audubon, was the keel boat or barge, which, in some cases, was also roofed and would hold about two hundred barrels of flour.[204] When assisted by oars in the bow, it could reduce the time of a journey to New Orleans by ten or fifteen days. These barges were pushed up stream with the aid of setting poles at an average rate of about twenty miles a day, or, if loaded, they were laboriously "cordelled," or drawn by the hands of men who trudged along the banks pulling at the cordelle.

The chief pleasures which Audubon's business ventures in the West seem to have afforded him were his leisurely journey by river and long horseback rides to Philadelphia to buy goods, when he could roam through his "beautiful and darling forests of Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania," which gave him grand opportunities to make observations upon birds and animal life of every sort. He would seldom hesitate to swerve from his course to study his favorites, and has related how on one occasion, when driving before him several horses laden with merchandise and dollars, he quite lost sight of the pack saddles and the cash they bore, in watching the motions of a warbler. But few coaches, said Audubon, were available in those days, and the post roads were often unfit for lighter carriages. To cover the distance from Louisville to Philadelphia on horseback required about twenty days, and only a capable animal and rider could make forty miles a day; when steamer traffic on the Ohio[205] was well in hand this time was reduced to six or seven days, in performing a journey which the modern railroad has shortened to not far from as many hours.

Discouraged by the gloomy prospects which their business at Louisville presented, Audubon and Rozier determined in the spring of 1810 to move 125 miles down the river to Henderson.[206] Loading the residue of their stock on a flatboat, they resolutely set out for the new field, but great was their surprise to find, in place of the thriving settlement which their imaginations had pictured, only a cluster of log houses on the river bank, with a population of less than 200 people and a demand for little else than whisky, gunpowder and coarse woolen goods. When the partners arrived, the little town was eighteen years old, as the first log cabins were built there in 1792, but the whole country above and below them was, and for a considerable time remained, one vast canebrake. All the commodities known to the pioneer store were scarce, but the people of Henderson were friendly, and the new settlers had been provident in bringing with them a goodly supply of flour and "bacon hams." Moreover, the Ohio, which was half a mile wide at that point, was well stocked with fish, and the woods and canebrakes were alive with birds, not to speak of larger and more important game. Not many years before, wild turkeys had been so plentiful that they were not sold but were given away, while a large buck deer could be bought in the season for fifty cents.

During their stay at Henderson, Rozier was in his habitual place behind the counter and attended to what little business was done, while Audubon with a Kentucky lad named John Pope, who was nominally a clerk, roamed the country in eager pursuit of rare birds, and with rod and gun bountifully supplied the table. Audubon's first abode in the town was, as he said, "a log-_cabin_, not a _log-house_," in which the richest piece of furniture was their child's cradle. He soon began to cultivate a garden, but his experience in horticulture must have been limited, for he naïvely remarks that the rankness of the soil kept the seeds they planted "far beneath the tall weeds which sprang up the first year."

Financial distress and hard times were already being felt in the Blue Grass State, and these conditions were not destined soon to improve. After experimenting for six months, or more, at Henderson, our two "rolling stones" determined to push still farther west and try their luck at a more promising point. They had hoped to reach St. Louis but finally went instead to Ste. Geneviève, then a small French settlement in Upper Louisiana, on the right bank of the Mississippi, a hundred miles north of the mouth of the Ohio.

This new venture promised to be both hazardous and uncertain, and as Mrs. Audubon and Rozier were not on the friendliest terms, Audubon decided to leave his family at Henderson, where a home for his wife and infant son could always be had under the hospitable roof of Dr. Adam Rankin, who became one of the naturalist's staunchest friends. If their stock in trade at this time actually consisted of "three hundred barrels of whisky, sundry dry-goods and powder," as Audubon affirmed, the keel boat which they then engaged was certainly calculated to bear a goodly load.[207] At all events the partners, with young Pope, their clerk, set out bravely, in a snow storm, in December, 1810. They floated with the current at a rate of about five miles an hour, while they helped their craft along by means of four oars in her bow and steered it with the aid of a slender tree trunk, "shaped at its outer extremity like the fin of a dolphin."

This journey of upwards of 165 miles lasted altogether more than nine weeks. It proved adventurous enough, but it was of no use to Audubon except in furnishing him with drawings of new birds and the raw materials for many "Episodes." The journal of his experiences on the great rivers during that eventful winter of 1810 and 1811 is interesting for the sidelights which it throws both upon his character and upon the state of the country at an elder day. Held up by the ice for several weeks at Cash Creek, near the mouth of the Ohio, to his own delight but to Rozier's sorrow, Audubon tramped the country and hunted wild swans and larger game with the friendly Shawnee Indians. "When one day's sport was over," he said, "we counted more than fifty of these beautiful birds whose skins were intended for the ladies of Europe. There were plenty of geese and ducks, but no one condescended to give them a shot." This was Audubon in 1810, when such "sport" was regarded as legitimate enough, and the feather-hunting of such Indians was not considered the nefarious trade that it proved to be. If we shift the scene to twenty years later, when William MacGillivray needed thousands of specimens of American birds for his studies upon their anatomy and variability, we find Audubon supplying him liberally, but he could not then bear to see them killed wantonly or for mere sport; more than once, out of compassion for individual birds that he chanced to be studying, whether in Florida or in Labrador, he would not permit them to be shot even when needed for his collections.

At the Shawnee Indian camp, to relate a characteristic anecdote, Audubon noticed that a squaw who "had been delivered of beautiful twins during the night" was busied on the next day at her usual task of tanning deer skins. "She cut two vines," his record reads, "at the roots of opposite trees and made a cradle of the bark, in which the new born ones were wafted to and fro with a push of her hand, while from time to time she gave them the breast, and was apparently as unconcerned as if the event had not taken place."

When at last our adventurers gained the Mississippi, the mighty volume of which was running three miles an hour, the patron ordered all hands ashore to pull at the bow rope. This characteristic remark of the naturalist is delightful, as showing the "single eye" which it has been declared of old shall be "full of light": "we made," said Audubon, "seven miles a day up the famous river; but while I was tugging with my back at the cordella, I kept my eyes fixed on the forests or the ground, looking for birds or curious shells."

Warping against the current was both difficult and dangerous, and though they rose two hours before the sun, they could make but one mile an hour or ten miles in the day. At night they would go ashore, light a good fire and cook their supper; then, after posting a sentinel to guard against unfriendly surprises, they would roll in their buffalo skins and sleep without further concern. Notwithstanding all their efforts, when they reached the Great Bend at Tawapatee Bottom, they were obliged to unship their cargo, protect their boat as best they could from being crushed in the growing pack, and await the final breaking up of the ice. "The sorrows of Rozier," at this dismal announcement, said Audubon, "were too great to be described; wrapped in a blanket, like a squirrel in winter quarters with his tail about his nose, he slept and dreamed his time away, being seldom seen except at meals." There was not a white man's cabin within twenty miles, but a new field opened to the naturalist, who tramped through the deep forests, and soon became acquainted with all the Indian trails and lakes in the neighborhood.

The six weeks spent at this camp passed pleasantly for Audubon, who devoted much of the time in studying the Osage Indians, whom he thought superior to the Shawnees, as well as in watching for wolves, bears, deer, cougars, racoons and wild turkeys, some of which were attracted by the bones and scraps of food thrown out for them: "I drew," said he, "more or less, by the side of our great camp-fire, every day." While detained at this point, they used for bread the breasts of turkeys, buttered with bear's grease, and opossum and bear's meat, until their stomachs revolted and they longed for a little Indian meal, which was procured only with the greatest difficulty.

When at last the ice broke up, splitting with reports like the thunder of heavy artillery, their prospects were dismal indeed, for their boat was immediately jammed by the rushing ice, and they were powerless to move her. "While we were gazing on the scene," to continue Audubon's record, "a tremendous crash was heard, which seemed to have taken place about a mile below, when suddenly the great dam gave way. The current of the Mississippi had forced its way against that of the Ohio, and in less than four hours we witnessed the complete breaking up of the ice." Having reloaded their goods, they were ready to start at a favorable moment, and taking leave of the friendly Indians, "as when brothers part," they pushed on through the floating ice, past Cape Girardeau, to Sainte Geneviève, a town which Audubon characterized as "not so large as dirty," declaring that the time spent there did not yield him half the pleasure he had felt at Tawapatee Bottom. It was near a granite tower which rose from a dangerous rock in the river below Ste. Geneviève that Audubon caught sight of what he afterwards described as "Washington's Eagle," a bird now believed to have been the true "bird of freedom," the "Bald-" or White-headed Eagle, but in an immature state.

Though their whisky was welcomed at Ste. Geneviève and what had cost the traders twenty-five cents, brought them two dollars, a gallon, Audubon heartily disliked the place and its people. Rozier, on the contrary, who had found plenty of Frenchmen with whom he could freely converse, was resolved to stay. Audubon accordingly proposed to sell out his share in the business, and the partnership was dissolved on April 6, 1811, Rozier paying part of the price in cash and the remainder in notes. In referring to the incident in his journal of 1820, Audubon wrote: "I parted with Mr. Rozier, and walked to Henderson in four days—165 miles"; but this does not agree with a later account, in which he spoke of having "purchased a beauty of a horse," and, happy in the prospect of again seeing his family, set out for Dr. Rankin's house in Kentucky. In the earlier record he also wrote that he once had a friend in trade, referring to Ferdinand Rozier, "with whom he did not agree, and so they parted forever"; but Audubon visited Ste. Geneviève in the autumn of 1811 and in the winter of 1812, probably for the purpose of collecting his money and settling his affairs, while the following letters of this period show that friendly relations with his old partner were not seriously impaired:[208]

_John James Audubon to Ferdinand Rozier_

LOUISVILLE, _2d November 1811_.

MR. F. ROZIER St. Geneviève.

MY DEAR ROZIER;

I reached here on the 31st of last month a little fatigued, as you can well imagine. Yesterday I wrote to T. W. Bakewell at New Orleans, and doubt not he is sending you regularly the prices current of the market there. I have found here a letter addressed to my brother-in-law from Benj. Bakewell, who complains of us, and says that we ought to settle with him in one way or another; write to him at Pittsburgh; I will be with him, possibly at the same time, and will speak with him; by the bill which he inclosed you will see that we are his debtor for 55$. I am leaving here in 2 or 3 days. I wish you health and prosperity, and with the respects of my wife, I am always your friend &

Servant

J. AUDUBON.

[Addressed] MR. FD. ROZIER Merchant St _Genevieve_ u.L.

_John James Audubon to Ferdinand Rozier_

SHIPPINGPORT. _10th Augst. 1812_

MY DEAR ROZIER;—

As it is quite likely that the present opportunity is safe, I take pleasure in writing you a few words.

Your letter sent to Philadelphia was duly received, and answered promptly; since I have heard news of you only by the most indirect means, I would be happy if you can give a few moments to your friends, if you would count me in their number, and would write me from time to time; I left Philadelphia last month with my wife and son; most of this time was spent in descending the Ohio, which is at present very low; we had the barge and crew of G[en]l. Clark, with the company of Mr. R. A. Maupin, and of Mrs. Galt, who had spent several months at New York & at Phila. I shall probably descend [the river] to New Orleans this autumn with N. Berthoud; [all kinds of] merchandise are extremely scarce and very dear, everywhere, but even more is this true of coarse woolens, which one does not find at all.

I have no doubt your lead is selling very well, this article having increased considerably [in value] since the war. In the latter part of my stay in the East I received a letter from my father, and one from your brother; all your family were then well, that is, four months ago; your brother is very anxious to hear from you; if peace should come at a day not far remote (and may it please God that this be so), I hope to get into communication with him.

I have written to him and I urge you to do the same; your letters can be delivered, if sent to New York, and from thence on the Cartel.[209] My wife is well and [so is] my son; may you be the same, and count among the number of your friends him who would esteem you always.

Adieu

J. AUDUBON.

[Addressed] MRS F. ROZIERS Mercht St _Genevieve_ u.L.

Friendly relations with his former partner in trade were occasionally renewed by the naturalist in after life. At one of their last meetings, in 1842, Rozier, who had then returned from France, visited Audubon at his home on the Hudson, and both were entertained in New York by their mutual friend, Nicholas Berthoud.

Ferdinand Rozier, with whom we now part company, lived to enjoy abundant prosperity as a trader and merchant at Ste. Geneviève. Born in Nantes on November 9, 1777,[210] at the age of twenty-five he entered the French navy, at a time when Napoleon was contesting with England the supremacy of the sea. He made numerous voyages, and we hear of him at the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of France or Mauritius, at Cadiz, Teneriffe, and at the Island of Bartholomew. Eventually, on April 8, 1804, he embarked on the cutter _Experiment_, with Captain Upton in charge, bound for the United States, where he visited a number of American ports, including Philadelphia and Norfolk. In the following year he returned to France in the frigate _President_, Captain Gallic Lebrosse, and entered the harbor of Nantes on March 1, 1805.[211] In the spring of that year John James Audubon, as we have seen, had also returned to that city, and plans were eventually laid for their commercial aggrandizement in the New World which both had so lately visited. To what extent Audubon's dreams failed of realization may be gathered from the following chapters.

Having settled finally at Ste. Geneviève, Rozier, at thirty-six, married Constance Roy, a girl of eighteen, who bore him ten children, four of whom, all octogenarians, were living in 1905. Ferdinand Rozier's thrift and industry soon brought him substantial rewards. In his earlier days he is said to have made six journeys to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase merchandise, and these trading expeditions were uniformly successful. His trade extended over the whole of Upper Louisiana, and he lived to see the great growth of Missouri as a sovereign state, along with the development of the fabulous mineral wealth of the district.[212]

Rozier's old store at Ste. Geneviève, for long a landmark in that community and considered a pretentious building in its day, was undoubtedly built after the date of Audubon's visit. The front was devoted to the service of customers and a large shed or stock room was placed at the rear, while the family lived in the main section, which was entered by a door not shown in our illustration.[213] When this building was demolished to make way for modern changes, the wooden pins used in joining the frame were treasured by many as souvenirs of pioneer times.

Ferdinand Rozier, who outlived Audubon by thirteen years, died at Ste. Geneviève on January 1, 1864, at the age of eighty-seven years. If he were one of those who thought that Audubon was wasting his time in his ardent zeal for natural history, it should not surprise us, for their ideals were in conflict, and the naturalist's way of working was certainly not conducive to success in trade.