When this larger venture failed, one of the publishers, who was not satisfied with the surplusage of books and plates left on his hands, is said to have placed encumbrances upon the Audubon estate. At about this time John W. Audubon's health broke down; "Worn out," as his daughter has said,[237] "in body and spirit, overburdened with anxieties, saddened by the condition of his country, it is no matter of surprise that my father could not throw off a heavy cold which attacked him early in 1862." He died at the age of forty-nine, on the 18th of February of that year. John Woodhouse Audubon, like his brother, Victor, had inherited decided artistic abilities, and from a youth had been his father's assistant, field companion and friend. Victor Audubon, on the other hand, was never a field collector, but aided his father more in a financial and secretarial capacity. Both in adult life were fond of music and good cheer, and at one time John was probably as devoted to adventure and sport as his father had ever been in his palmiest days. One of his youthful pranks is thus guardedly referred to by the senior Audubon when writing at American Harbor, on the coast of Labrador, June 25, 1833:[238] "The young men, who are always ready for sport, caught a hundred codfish in half an hour, and _somewhere_ secured three fine salmon, one of which was sent to the 'Gulnare' with some cod." Whether the fishermen at American Harbor, who had obstinately refused to sell, ever missed those fine salmon from their pounds, is not recorded. Another adventure has been related by Mr. Fraser,[239] whose family was on intimate terms with the Audubons and MacGillivrays at Edinburgh, when John Audubon, John MacGillivray (William MacGillivray's eldest son), and himself were caught in the Ravelston woods while shooting birds; the boys, he said "were rather roughly handled," but got off by giving up their guns. Under his father's tuition John Audubon became an observant and self-reliant collector in the field, and an animal painter and draughtsman of no mean powers. At twenty-one, as we have seen, he accompanied his father's expedition to Labrador, was with him and Harris in Florida and Texas in 1837, made successive visits to England, and traveled again in Texas and in Mexico, all in the interests of his father's works. He painted nearly one-half of the large plates of the _Quadrupeds of North America_, besides reducing all the drawings for the smaller editions of the _Birds_ and _Quadrupeds_, an enormous labor in itself, representing the redrawing, with numerous alterations, of 655 elaborate octavo plates. After his return from California in 1850, he began to bring out an account of his western travels, —projected for ten monthly numbers, but this never advanced beyond the first part.[240]