Audubon makes his bow at Philadelphia—Is greeted with plaudits and cold water—Friendship of Harlan, Sully, Bonaparte and Harris—Hostility of Ord, Lawson and other friends of Alexander Wilson—A meeting of academicians—Visit to "Mill Grove"—Exhibits drawings in New York and becomes a member of the Lyceum—At the Falls of Niagara—In a gale on Lake Erie—Episode at Meadville—Walk to Pittsburgh—Tour of Lakes Ontario and Champlain—Decides to take his drawings to Europe—Descends the Ohio in a skiff—Stranded at Cincinnati—Teaching at St. Francisville. In 1824 after five hard years of struggle and embarrassment, Audubon decided that the time had come to bring his labors to the light of day. At thirty-nine, he read and spoke two languages but was without adequate training in either; he had never written a line for publication, and to the scientific world he was a stranger. Though without a definite plan, he cherished the ardent hope of presenting the birds of his beloved America as he had depicted them, to the size of life, and with all the added interest and zest that a natural environment could give them. To Philadelphia the naturalist now turned his steps, for that city was then a Mecca for scientific men. Leaving Shippingport in March, he reached the Quaker capital on the fifth day of April. There he purchased a new suit of clothes, and, dressed "with extreme neatness," paid his respects to Dr. William Mease, the one friend there whom he had known intimately in his younger and more prosperous days. It was primarily through this excellent man's interest that Audubon met the leading artists and scientific men of the city, including Thomas Sully, Robert and Rembrandt Peale, Richard Harlan, Charles Le Sueur, and Charles L. Bonaparte, the latter then a rising young ornithologist of one and twenty. It was Bonaparte who introduced Audubon to the Academy of Natural Sciences, where his drawings were exhibited and generally admired. Among his critics on that occasion was George Ord, who from their first interview seems to have looked upon the new luminary with jealous eyes. Whether this was true or not, there is no doubt that Ord became one of his few really bitter and implacable adversaries, and not many days elapsed before Audubon came to feel that many in Philadelphia would be glad to see him return to the backwoods of the Middle West, from which, like an apple of Sodom, he seemed suddenly to have dropped into their midst. Those who were most interested in the continued sale and success of Wilson's _Ornithology_, he declared, advised him not to publish anything, and threw not only cold water but ice upon all his plans. Thus began that unseemly rivalry, fostered for many years by George Ord in this country, between the friends of Alexander Wilson and those of John James Audubon, the dead embers of which are occasionally stirred even to this day.[299]