124 
PSITTACUS CAROLINENSIS. 
its left foot to hold the bur, as did several others that 
I kept for some time. I begun to think that this might 
be peculiar to the whole tribe, and that they all were, 
if I may use the expression, left-footed ; but by shooting 
a number afterwards while engaged in eating mul- 
berries, 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 indiscri- 
minately, 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 fre- 
quently 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 power- 
ful bill. The path through the wilderness between 
Nashville and Natchez is in some places bad beyond 
description. There are dangerous creeks to swftn, 
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 
bringing it along. When at night I encamped in the 
woods, I placed it on the baggage beside me, where it 
usually sat, with great composure, dozing and gazing 
at the fire till morning. In this manner I carried it 
upwards 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 pass- 
ing through the Chickasaw and Chactaw nations, the 
Indians, wherever I stopped to feed, collected around 
