384 
CAROLINA PARROT. 
board. The intermediate time between eating and sleeping 
was occupied in gnawing the sticks that formed its place of 
confinement, in order to make a practicable breach ; which 
it repeatedly effected. When I abandoned the river, and 
travelled by land, I wrapt it up closely in a silk handkerchief, 
tying it tightly around, and carried it in my pocket. When 
I stopped for refreshment, I unbound my prisoner, and gave 
it its allowance, which it generally despatched with great 
dexterity, unhusking the seeds from the bur in a twinkling ; 
in doing which, it always employed its left foot to hold the 
bur, as did several others that I kept for some time. I began 
to think that this might be peculiar to the whole tribe, and 
that the whole were, if I may use the expression, left-footed ; 
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 
44 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 
several 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 
perpendicular, 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 tempted to abandon it ; but I persisted in 
