The very next day Audubon changed his plans and sailed up the Hudson to Albany, where he hoped to meet De Witt Clinton, then at the height of his fame, who in the course of his great undertakings had found time to write letters on the natural history and antiquities of his State, and Dr. Beck, the botanist. Failing to find either at home, Audubon was compelled by the depleted state of his pocketbook to give up his plan of visiting Boston, and being determined to see Niagara Falls, he took passage on a canal boat to Buffalo instead. The Falls were reached on the 24th of August, and it was then, on recording his name at an hotel, that Audubon wrote underneath: "Who, like Wilson, will ramble, but never, like that great man, die under the lash of a bookseller."[314] Upon his first view of the Falls he was satisfied that Niagara never had been and never could be painted. He wanted to cross the bridge at Goat Island but was deterred by the necessity of economy. Visitors it seems, had already learned to venture under a small section of the American Falls, and Audubon said that while looking through the falling sheet of water, "at their feet thousands of eels were lying side by side, trying vainly to ascend the torrent." After strolling through the village to find some bread and milk, the naturalist recorded that he ate a good dinner for twelve cents, and that he went to bed "thinking of Franklin eating his roll in the streets of Philadelphia, of Goldsmith traveling by the aid of his musical powers, and of other great men who had worked their way through hardships and difficulties to fame, and fell asleep, hoping, by persevering industry, to make a name for himself among his countrymen." The schooner from Buffalo to Erie, Pennsylvania, on which Audubon had taken deck passage, as he was unable to afford a berth in the cabin, was caught in a violent gale on the way and was obliged to anchor in the harbor of Presque Isle. "It was on the 29th of August, 1824," his diary reads, "and never shall I forget that morning." Captain Judd, of the United States Navy, had sent a gig with six men to its relief, and "my drawings," he continues, "were put into the boat with the greatest care. We shifted into it, and seated ourselves according to direction. Our brave fellows pulled hard, and every moment brought us nearer the American shore; I leaped upon it with elated heart. My drawings were safely landed, and for anything else I cared little at the moment." At this point Audubon set out with a fellow traveler, who was also an artist, for Meadville, Pennsylvania. The earliest version of his journal[315] which gives an account of this experience reads as follows: