Leaving the guava jungle, we proceeded through a district that seemed to have once been in cultivation, as all the high timber, with the exception of a solitary mahogany or cedar here and there, was cut down, and there was nothing to be seen but a thicket of palma Christi, or castor oil bushes, on every side. There had apparently been some heavy showers on this table land during the time we had been winding up the hill, as the bushes and long grass were sparkling brilliantly with rain-drops, and the ground was heavily saturated with water.
"Hillo, Twig, my darling," sung out uncle Lathom, who was the sternmost of all, except the servants, as we strung along the narrow path in single file "mind you take the road to the right there—it will save us a mile."
"Ay, ay, sir," returned he of the Dream.
Master Flamingo, who was between him and me, was busy at this moment with his fowling-piece, that he carried in his hand; the fame of abundance of teal and quails in the Macgregor's neighbourhood having reached him before starting.
"What a very beautiful bird that is, Mr Brail," here he pointed with the gun to the huge branch of a cotton tree that crossed the path overhead, where a large parrot was perched, looking at us; one moment scratching its beak with its claws, and the next, peeping knowingly down, and slewing its head first to one side and then to the other—a parrot, amongst the feathered tribes, being unquestionably what a monkey is amongst quadrupeds.
"I should like to bring that chap down now," said Flam, stopping in his career, and damming us up in the narrow path, whereby we all became clustered in a group about him; then suiting the action to the word, he, without any farther warning, dropped the rein into the hollow of his arm, and taking aim, let drive—and away went the whole party helter skelter at the report, in every direction, by a beautiful centrifugal movement. If we had been rockets disposed like the spokes of a cart-wheel, with the matches converging to a centre, and fired all at once, we could scarcely have radiated more suddenly. It was quite surprising the precision with which we flew crashing through the wet bushes, some of us nearly unhorsed amongst them, if the truth were known:—and such shouting from whites and blacks, and uproarious laughter, as we all got once more into sailing order!
"Now, friend Felix," said Twig, as he and his horse emerged from the brushwood, with his pale yellow nankeens as dark with moisture as a wet sail, his shirt frill and collar as if the garment had been donned fresh from the washing-tub, and with the large silvery globules of moisture as thickly clustered on the black silk frogs of his coat as diamonds on the Dowager Lady Castlereagh's stomacher—there's a simile for you,—"now, friend Felix—give one some notice next time you begin your fusilade, if you please. Why, did you ever see a pulk of Cossacks on a forage, Mr Frenche?—I declare I am glad to find myself on the beaten path again, for my horse took so many turns that I was fairly dumfounded, and having no pocket-compass nor a sextant to take the sun by—you perceive I have been at sea, Master Brail—I thought I should have been lost entirely, until you should have been piloted to me some days hence by the John Crows. But ah, ye little fishes, what is that—what is that?"
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."