About this time he and his son Victor were taken with yellow fever, and Mrs. Audubon was compelled to dismiss her school and go to nurse them. They both recovered, and, in October (1823), set out for Louisville, making part of the journey on foot. The following winter was passed at Shipping Port, near Louisville, where Audubon painted birds, landscapes, portraits and even signs. In March he left Shipping Port for Philadelphia, leaving his son Victor in the counting house of a Mr. Berthoud. He reached Philadelphia on April 5, and remained there till the following August, studying painting, exhibiting his birds, making many new acquaintances, among them Charles Lucien Bonaparte, giving lessons in drawing at thirty dollars per month, all the time casting wistful eyes toward Europe, whither he hoped soon to be able to go with his drawings. In July he made a pilgrimage to Mill Grove where he had passed so many happy years. The sight of the old familiar scenes filled him with the deepest emotions. In August he left Philadelphia for New York, hoping to improve his finances, and, may be, publish his drawings in that city. At this time he had two hundred sheets, and about one thousand birds. While there he again met Vanderlyn and examined his pictures, but says that he was not impressed with the idea that Vanderlyn was a great painter. The birds that he saw in the museum in New York appeared to him to be set up in unnatural and constrained attitudes. With Dr. De Kay he visited the Lyceum, and his drawings were examined by members of the Institute. Among them he felt awkward and uncomfortable. "I feel that I am strange to all but the birds of America," he said. As most of the persons to whom he had letters of introduction were absent, and as his spirits soon grew low, he left on the fifteenth for Albany. Here he found his money low also. Abandoning the idea of visiting Boston, he took passage on a canal boat for Rochester. His fellow-passengers on the boat were doubtful whether he was a government officer, commissioner, or spy. At that time Rochester had only five thousand inhabitants. After a couple of days he went on to Buffalo and, he says, wrote under his name at the hotel this sentence: "Who, like Wilson, will ramble, but never, like that great man, die under the lash of a bookseller." He visited Niagara, and gives a good account of the impressions which the cataract made upon him. He did not cross the bridge to Goat Island on account of the low state of his funds. In Buffalo he obtained a good dinner of bread and milk for twelve cents, and went to bed cheering himself with thoughts of other great men who had encountered greater hardships and had finally achieved fame.