160 
CAEOLINA 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 had 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 
