The numerous references which these letters contain regarding the disposition of the "Mill Grove" farm may well puzzle the reader who has followed the story to this point; we must therefore attempt to unravel the tangled threads of this intricate affair. In the spring of 1807 Audubon, who was then anxious to start a "retail shop," complained that the land, which could not be sold to advantage, kept them short of capital and prevented them from dealing on so large a scale as they could wish. On the 24th of April he wrote that three weeks before he had gone to "Mill Grove" and closed an agreement for renting the property (evidently referring to the farm as distinct from the mine) for a year, being unable to do better, and that Ferdinand was then in Philadelphia trying to settle his father's accounts with Dacosta, who did not readily forget his trickster's _rôle_. In Audubon's letter of the same day, inclosed in the same packet with the request that it be delivered to his father, there is a similar reference, with the note that Ferdinand, who had charge of the settlement, had chosen Mr. Huron as arbitrator, but that he would not agree unless honest Miers Fisher had a part in it. Finally, as late as the 19th of July of that year he wrote to Rozier, the elder, that they were hoping to sell "Mill Grove" in the autumn, but would do so only at a good profit; yet at this time the property had been out of their possession, technically at least, for nearly a year. Still more curious is this statement in Audubon's autobiography,[144] relating to the year 1813; "I bought a wild horse, and on its back travelled over Tennessee and a portion of Georgia, and so round till I finally reached Philadelphia, and then to your grandfather's at Fatland Ford. He had sold my plantation of Mill Grove to Samuel Wetherill, of Philadelphia, for a good round sum, and with this I returned through Kentucky and at last reached Henderson once more." When "Mill Grove" was conditionally sold to Dacosta and his mining company in September, 1806, he gave a mortgage and bond to Miers Fisher, who again became Lieutenant Audubon's agent. Many months elapsed before the necessary legal papers could arrive from France, and meanwhile Dacosta's yearly accounts were contested, and gave no end of trouble.[145]