hat if I were at all tired, they would, with
all the pleasure in the world, carry me in it. I preferred walking.

Officer, boat's crew, guides, boats and oars, proceeded in this manner
for more than half a mile up into the country. At length, by the
moonlight, I discovered a row of earthy mounds, that I positively, at
first, thought was a parcel of heaps such as I had seen in England,
under which potatoes are buried for the winter.

I was undeceived, by being welcomed to the town of some place, dreadful
in "as," and "ghas," and with a name so difficult to utter, that I could
not pronounce it when I attempted, and which, if I had ever been so
fortunate to retain, I should, for my own comfort, have made haste to
forget.

I hope that the "finest pisintry in the world" are better located now
than they were a quarter of a century ago, for they are, or were, a fine
peasantry, as far as physical organisation can make them, and deserve at
least to be housed like human beings; but what I saw, when on that night
I entered the mud edifice of my conductors, made me start with
astonishment. In the first place, the walls were mud all through, and
as rough on the inside as the out. There was actually no furniture in
it of any description; and the only implement I saw, was a large
globular iron pot, that stood upon spikes, like a carpenter's
pitch-kettle, which pot, at the moment of my entrance, was full of hot,
recently boiled, unskinned, fine mealy praties. Round this there might
have been sitting some twelve or fourteen persons of both sexes, and
various ages, none above five-and-twenty. But it must be remembered,
that the pot was upon the earth, and the earth was the floor, and the
circle was squatted round it. At the fire-place, each on a three-legged
stool, sat an elderly man and woman. These stools the fastidious may
call furniture if they please; but were any of my readers placed upon
one of them, so rough and dirty were they, that he or she must have been
very naughty, did not the stool of repentance prove a more pleasant
resting-place.

Among the squatted circle there were a bandy-legged drummer, and a
blotched-faced fifer, from the adjacent barracks, both in their
regimentals. They rose, and capped to my uniform. We were welcomed
with shouts of congratulations. My boat was brought in, and placed
bottom-up along one side of the hovel, and immediately the keel was
occupied by a legion of poultry, and half a scor