[Audubon offers to send his friend shrubs and fruits from the South, and concludes;] In fact, my dear Mr. Harris, I am yet the same man you knew at the corner of 5th, and Minor Streets [in Philadelphia], and will continue forever the same. After his tour of the Lakes Audubon returned to Pittsburgh, and on October 24, 1824, started down the Ohio in a skiff, intending to descend to the Mississippi and thence reach his family in Louisiana. Bad weather and lack of funds interfered with this plan, and ere long he was once more stranded in Cincinnati, where he was beset by claimants for payment upon articles ordered for the Western Museum five years before. Finding it difficult at this time to replenish an empty purse, Audubon felt that he must borrow fifteen dollars, but could not make up his mind how to ask the favor until he had several times walked past the house where he had once been known. Nevertheless, he succeeded in obtaining the necessary funds, took passage on a boat bound for Louisville, and slept cheerfully that night on a pile of shavings which he managed to scrape together on deck. "The spirit of contentment which I now feel," he wrote, "is strange; it borders on the sublime; and, enthusiastic or lunatic, as some of my relatives will have me, I am glad to possess such a spirit"; later he added: "I discover that my friends think only of my apparel, and those upon whom I have conferred acts of kindness prefer to remind me of my errors." Louisville was reached on November 20, and a number of days were spent in visiting his eldest son, Victor, who was then at Shippingport.[319] He finally arrived at Bayou Sara in late November, 1824. The captain of his vessel, which was bound for New Orleans, put him ashore at midnight, and he was left to grope his way to the village on the hill. St. Francisville, to his dismay, was nearly deserted, a scourge of yellow fever having driven most of its inhabitants to the pine woods. The postmaster, however, was able to assure him that his wife and son were well, and Mr. Nübling, a friendly German, whom he described as "a man of cultivation and taste, and a lover of Natural Science," gave him refreshment and a horse. In his eagerness to cover the fifteen miles to the Percy house as rapidly as possible, he tried to strike a straight course through the dark forest, but missed his way, and dawn found him on unfamiliar ground; he then learned from a negro that he was two miles beyond the place. When he arrived at last "with rent and wasted clothes, and uncut hair, and altogether looking like the wandering Jew," his wife was busily engaged in teaching her pupils. During his absence of nearly fourteen months she had prospered greatly, and she was not only ready but eager to place her earnings at her husband's disposal.