but the green and yellow parrots too plainly showed
a strong disposition to put another interpretation
on the phraseology. My paternal nest was situated
in the hollow of one of the most ancient and lofty
trees in the forest. It had once been rich in
fruit and flowers, gums and odours, and all in the
same season; and though it was now scathed at the top,
hollow in the trunk, and was threatened with total
ruin from the first hurricane, we still preferred
it, because it was the oldest. I owed
all my early impressions, and much of my acquired superiority,
to my great grandfather, who lived to an extreme old
age, and attained a celebrity, of which we were ourselves
at that time unaware. He was the identical bird
which was brought from Marignan to Prince Maurice,
governor of the Brazils, and whose pertinent answers
to many silly questions are recorded in the pages
of the greatest of English philosophers. My great
grandfather was soon disgusted with the folly and
cruelty of what is called civilized life; and having
seen an Indian roasted alive for a false religion’s
sake, he thought that some day they might take it
into their heads to do as much by a macaw, for the
same reason. So he availed himself of an early
opportunity of retiring without leave from the service,
and returned to his native forest, where his genius
and learning at once raised him to the highest honours
of the Psittacan aristocracy. Influenced by his
example, I early felt the desire of visiting foreign
countries. My mother too (who, though fond and
indulgent, like all the mothers of our race, was as
vain and foolish as any that I have since met with
in human society) worked powerfully on my ambition,
by her constant endeavours to “push me up the
tree,” as she called it, in her way. I
was already a first-rate orator, and a member of the
great congress of macaws; while in our social re-unions
I left all the young birds of fashion far behind me:
and as I not only articulated some human sounds picked
up from the Indians, but could speak a few words of
Portuguese and Dutch, learned by rote from my great
grandfather, I was considered a genius of high order.
With the conceit, therefore, of all my noble family,
I was prompted to go forth and visit other and better
worlds, and to seek a sphere better adapted to the
display of my presumed abilities, than that afforded
by our domestic senate and home-spun society.
On one of those celestial nights, known only in the
tropical regions, I set forth on my travels, directing
my course to the Portuguese settlement, which the
youthful vigour of my wing enabled me to reach by
the break of morning. Having refreshed myself
with a breakfast of fruit, after the exhaustion of
my nocturnal flight, I ascended a spacious palm tree,
which afforded an admirable view of the adjacent country,
and a desirable shelter from the ardours of the rising
sun. My first impulse was to take a bird’s-eye
view of the novel scene which lay before me, and I
gazed around for some minutes with intense delight;