Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/368

 might have occurred during my voyage to the dear ones at home rendered me nervous and very unhappy. The southern hemisphere does not please me as much as the northern; the stars appear more brilliant and larger in the north.

18th.—The ship was passing through quantities of seaweed, supposed to be drifted from the Gulf of Mexico; it is always found in this latitude. The children amused themselves with writing letters to their mother, and sending them overboard, corked up in empty bottles.

May 7th.—Polidorus, the great pet parrot, died; the pitching of the vessel and the cramp killed the bird, in spite of the warmth of flannel: of our four birds one only now survived; and very few remained of twenty-four paroquets brought on board by the crew. A flight of paroquets in India, with their bright green wings and rose-coloured necks, is a beautiful sight.

The education of a paroquet is a long and a serious affair; a native will take his bird on his finger daily, and repeat to it incessantly, for an hour or two at a time, the name of the deity he worships, or some short sentence, until the bird—hearing the same sounds every day for weeks or months together—remembers and imitates them. If in a cage, it is covered over with a cloth, that the attention of the birds may not be diverted from the sounds: sometimes a native will let the bird down a well for an hour or two, that it may be in darkness, while, lying on the top of the well, he repeats the daily lesson.

Many birds are worshipped by the Hindūs, of which the principal is G[)u]roor[)u], whose feathers are of gold, with the head and wings of a bird, and the rest of his body like a man, the vahan of Vishn[)u], who rides on his back; and at times, the bird god, in the shape of a flag, sits on the top of Vishn[)u]'s car,—the lord of the feathered tribe, the devourer of serpents. When the Hindūs lie down to sleep they repeat the name of G[)u]roor[)u] three times, to obtain protection from snakes.

The bird J[)u]tayoo is the friend of Rama, and is worshipped at the same festival with him.

The Sh[)u]nk[)u]r[)u] Chill[)u], the eagle of Coromandel, the white-headed kite, commonly called the Brahmanī kite, is considered