It was neither more nor less than the sound of an ill-blown, yelling and grunting bagpipe. We rode on--the diabolical instrument squealing louder and louder--until the path ended in a cleared space amidst the brushwood, with a small one-story _wattled_ house in the centre, having a little piazza in front, with a yard or two at each end, shut in with wooden blinds, sadly bleached by the weather. There was a group of half-naked negroes squatting before it, and a number of little naked black children, and a sprinkling of brown ones, running about, and puddling in a dirty pond, amongst innumerable ducks, fowls of many kinds, and at least a dozen pigs. "No signs of any approach to famine in the land at all events," thought I. There was no rail or fence of any kind enclosing this building, which, to all appearance, was neither more nor less than a superior kind of negro-house. It stood on the very edge--indeed was overshadowed by some gigantic trees (beneath whose Babylonish dimensions it shrank to a dog-kennel) of the high natural forest, a magnificent vista through which opened right behind it, overarching a broken up and deeply rutted road, the path, apparently, through which some heavy timber had been drawn, it being part of Rory's trade to prepare mill-rollers and other large pieces of hard-wood required for the estates below. In front of this shed--full fig, in regular Highland costume, philabeg, short hose, green coatee, bonnet and feather--marched the bagpiper, whose strains had surprised us so much, blowing his instrument, and strutting and swelling like a turkey-cock, to some most barbarous mixture of "a gathering of the clans," and the negro tune of "Guinea corn, I love for nyam you." The fellow was a negro, and as black as the ace of spades--shade of Ossian, let thy departed heroes hereafter recline on clouds of tobacco smoke--and as we approached he "loud and louder blew," to the great discomfiture of our whole party, as the animals we bestrode seemed to like the "chanter" as little as they had done the report of Flamingo's gun, one and all resolutely refusing, as if by common consent, to face the performer--so there we were, jammed, snorting, and funking, and splashing each other to the eyes with mud of the complexion and consistency of _peas brose_, in the narrow path; Twig and I, the head of the column, as it were, being the only individuals visible on the fringe of the brushwood. "I say, Rory--Rory Macgregor," shouted Twig, "do give over--do tell your black bagpiper to have done with his most infernal noise, and be hanged to him--or we must all go home again without our dinner--none of our horses will _debouche_ in the face of such a salutation, don't you see?"