We left Richmond this morning in a stage well crammed with Italian musicians and southern merchants, arrived at Petersburg at a late hour, dined, and were again crammed in a car drawn by a locomotive, which dragged us twelve miles an hour, and sent out sparks of fire enough to keep us constantly busy in extinguishing them on our clothes. At Blakely we were again crammed into a stage, and dragged two miles an hour. We crossed the Roanoke River by torchlight in a flatboat, passed through Halifax, Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Columbia, where we spent the night. Here I met Dr. Gibbs, at whose house we passed the evening, and who assisted me greatly; at his house I met President Thomas Cooper, who assured me he had seen a rattlesnake climb a five-rail fence on his land. I received from the treasury of the State four hundred and fifty dollars on account of its subscription for one copy of the "Birds of America." For a number of years Audubon's snake stories had subjected him to no little ridicule in certain quarters, and this notice of a climbing rattlesnake pleased him so much that he asked the venerable president to put his statement in writing; he willingly complied, and his interesting letter on the subject will be given in a later chapter.[44] When Audubon and his wife reached the Bachman home on October 24, he was prepared to push on to the South, but changed his plans, on account, he said, "of the removal of my good friend Captain Robert Day from his former station to New York, and I did not like to launch on the Florida reefs in the care of a young officer unknown to me." The winter of 1833-4 was passed under the hospitable rooftree of his friend, in the usual occupations of painting, writing and hunting birds. At this time an attachment sprang up between his younger son, John Woodhouse Audubon, and Maria Rebecca, the eldest daughter of the Bachman household. Here Audubon wrote the first drafts of many of the bird biographies contained in the second volume of his letterpress, and with Bachman conducted a series of careful experiments on the power of smell in vultures, in order to settle a question which had then become acute among naturalists.[45] This subject is referred to in the following intimate letter,[46] which reveals the confidence which Audubon felt in his sons and in their united ability to bring his great undertaking to a successful issue, as well as the infinite pains which he bestowed upon every part of it. Audubon, who was now in his forty-ninth year, felt that he was aging very fast, and declared that one year then would be equal to three, three years from that time. _Audubon to his Son, Victor_ CHARLESTON, _Dc., 24, 1833_. MY DEAR BELOVED VICTOR:—