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 score of pigs, little and big, were at the same time to be seen dubbing their snouts under the gunnel, on voyages of alimentary discovery. I was immediately pulled down between two really handsome lasses in the circle; and, with something like savage hospitality, had my cheeks stuffed with the burning potatoes.