160 CAROLINA PARROT. 



but by shooting a number afterwards, while engaged in eating 

 mulberries, I found sometimes the left, sometimes the right 

 foot, stained with the fruit; the other always clean; from which, 

 and the constant, practice of those I kept, it appears, that like 

 the human species in the use of their hands, they do not prefer 

 one or the other indiscriminately, but are either left or right- 

 footed. But to return to my prisoner. In recommitting it to 

 "durance vile," we generally had a quarrel; during which it 

 frequently paid me in kind for the .wound I had inflicted, and 

 for depriving it of liberty, by cutting and almost disabling se- 

 veral of my fingers with its sharp and powerful bill. The path 

 through the wilderness, between Nashville and Natchez, is in 

 some places bad beyond description. There are dangerous creeks 

 to swim, miles of morass to struggle through, rendered almost 

 as gloomy as night by a prodigious growth of timber, and an 

 underwood of canes and other evergreens; while the descent 

 into these sluggish streams is often ten or fifteen feet perpen- 

 dicular into a bed of deep clay. In some of the worst of these 

 places, where I had, as it were, to fight my way through, the 

 Paroquet frequently escaped from my pocket, obliging me to 

 dismount and pursue it through the worst of the morass, before 

 I could regain it. On these occasions I was several times tempt- 

 ed to abandon it; but I persisted in bringing it along. When at 

 night I encamped in the woods, I placed it on the baggage be- 

 side me, where it usually sat, with great composure, dozing and 

 gazing at the fire till morning. In this manner I carried it up- 

 wards of a thousand miles in my pocket, where it was exposed 

 all day to the jolting of the horse, but regularly liberated at meal 

 times, and in the evening, at which it always expressed great 

 satisfaction. In passing through the Chickasaw and Chactaw 

 nations, the Indians, wherever I stopped to feed, collected 

 around me, men, women and children, laughing and seeming 

 wonderfully amused with the novelty of my companion. The 

 Chickasaws called it in their language " Kelinky;" but when 

 they heard me call it Poll, they soon repeated the name; and 

 wherever I chanced to stop among these people, we soon became 





