"Magyarland," volume 1 (of 2)

[Illustration: VALLEY OF THE FÜNF-SEEN.

FRONTISPIECE, Vol. I.]

“Magyarland;”

BEING THE NARRATIVE OF OUR TRAVELS THROUGH THE HIGHLANDS AND LOWLANDS OF HUNGARY.

By A Fellow Of The Carpathian Society, Author Of ‘The Indian Alps.’

[Illustration]

In Two Volumes.--Vol. I.

With Illustrations.

LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET. 1881.

[_All Rights reserved._]

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

Dedicated

To

All Who Love Mountains

By

One Who Worships Them.

Contents Of Vol. I.

Chapter I. Page Introductory 3

Chapter II. The Puszta 17

Chapter III. A Caution To Snails 30

Chapter IV. Gipsy Music 44

Chapter V. We Are Met By Our Guide 55

Chapter VI. DéLI-BáB 66

Chapter VII. The AgáS Or Hungarian Well 78

Chapter VIII. Dawn In The AlfőLD 92

Chapter IX. The Race 104

Chapter X. Pest 122

Chapter XI. The Volksgarten 136

Chapter XII. The Ice-Caves 154

Chapter XIII. A Storm In The Mountains 169

Chapter XIV. Slovaks And Rusniaks 184

Chapter XV. The Snowy TáTra 196

Chapter XVI. Goblins Of The Mist 208

Chapter XVII. The Mountain Home 222

Chapter XVIII. The Gipsy Camp 239

Chapter XIX. The Red Convent 252

Chapter XX. Zakopane 265

Chapter XXI. The Chamois Hunter 277

Chapter XXII. Zigzagging 289

Chapter XXIII. Yetta 298

Chapter XXIV. The Mountain Funeral 311

Chapter XXV. AndráS In Difficulties 325

Chapter XXVI. Afloat! 340

Chapter XXVII. A Moonlight Medley 353

Chapter XXVIII. Shooting The Cataracts 366

[Illustration]

List Of Illustrations.

Vol. I.

Full-Page Illustrations.

VALLEY OF THE FÜNF-SEEN _Frontispiece_ THE ICE-CAVES OF DOBSINA _Facing page_ 155

Small Illustrations.

PAGE A YOUNG HUNGARIAN NOBLE viii VIEW ON THE GULF OF VENICE 16 SLOVENE GIRL 17 SHEPHERD AND SHEEP ON THE PLAINS 26 BRIGANDS 29 OLD HUNGARIAN PEASANT 30 PEASANTS IN COUNTRY CART 32 GOING TO CHURCH 34 “LITTLE NELL” 41 “CARRIAGES MEET THE TRAINS!” 43 TRAVELLERS BIVOUACKING FOR THE NIGHT 51 MAGYAR COSTUMES 54 OUR GUIDE 56 A HUNGARIAN VILLAGE 58 GIPSY-TENT 65 THE THRESHOLD OF ALFŐLD 72 DÉLI-BÁB (A MIRAGE) 76 SHEPHERD’S HUT AND WELL 91 PEASANTS AT A WELL 95 COTTAGE DOORWAY 103 A RAINY DAY 105 OUR GUIDE’S WIFE 111 JÖZSEF 121 CHURCH STEEPLE AT PEST 122 A TRUE MAGYAR 133 OUR CHAMBER-MAID 135 BOAT-HOUSE IN THE VOLKSGARTEN 143 A MAGYAR LADY 147 UNDER THE ROBINIAS 153 THE “CORRIDOR” IN THE ICE-CAVES 154 THE SPITZENSTEIN 157 WOMEN WASHING IN A STREAM 165 FETCHING THE MILK 168 AN INN KITCHEN 176 DOWN THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE 181 A CORNER IN THE INN PARLOUR 183 AMONGST THE SLOVAKS AND RUSNIAKS AT WERNÁR 188 “THE LAST SWEET THING IN HATS” 190 A YOUTHFUL SLOVAK IN TEARS 195 VILLA SONTAGH 202 TÁTRA-FŰRED 204 A RUSNIAK BROTHER! 207 GOBLINS OF THE MIST 208 ZIGZAGGING 211 “MINSH’S” FLIGHT 221 THE LOMNITZER-SPITZE 236 A CARPATHIAN CART 238 KESMARK 242 OLD MAGYAR WOMAN 251 THE RED CONVENT 254 BY THE WAY-SIDE 256 THE “ROYAL HUNGARIAN MAIL” 264 PEAKS OF THE NORTHERN TÁTRA 269 LAKE IN THE MOUNTAINS 276 THE HERR GRAF 277 TÁTRA STAFF 290 A MOUNTAIN “GOTTESACKER” 305 WAY-SIDE SHRINE 310 SLOVAK SYMPATHY 319 COVERED CART CONTAINING ZIPSER PEASANTS 324 MORE “GENTLE SLOVAKS” 332 GREETING 339 MERCHANDISE BOAT ON THE DANUBE 340 A SWINE-HERD’S HUT 346 THE SCULLERY-MAID OF S. S. SZECHENYI 352 OUR DANUBIAN JEANNETTE 361 A SLAVONIAN BOAT 365 CASTLE OF GOLUMBACZ 370 THE BOSNIAN BRETHREN 374 A HUNGARIAN COUNTRY INN 379

“Magyarland.”

Chapter I.

Introductory.

The sun has sunk to rest in the warm bosom of the plains, and the porphyry hills of Buda stand out blue against the sky. In the long green avenue of robinias which line the quay, the flowers, drooping from the fervid heat of noontide, now unfold their perfumed petals and scent the evening air. Zephyrs, Oriental in their softness, come borne towards us over the Southern waves of the Danube, while from the gilded balconies of the houses along the shore are heard the melodious ring of voices and merry laughter, where the Magyar ladies sit to enjoy the cool breeze. Above the streets and squares of Pest, the black-and-gold cupolas glistening in the ruddy gleam of expiring day look like sentinels flashing emblazoned sabres.

What bright and pleasant recollections rise before us of the beautiful city as, in fancy, we visit it again and see its noble palaces that skirt the banks of the river casting the long reflections of their white façades in the deep waters beneath!

Immediately opposite Pest, separated by the monarch of European rivers, lies Buda, linked to its sister-city by the most splendid suspension bridge the world yet boasts.

Passing once more in fancy the grim lions that guard its entrance and crossing over to the other side, what stirring memories come crowding into the mind! What changes have come over this ancient city of kings since Imperial Rome sat proudly enthroned within its confines, and in her days of pomp and power erected this amphitheatre, enduring type of her greatness and her brutality! How varied and mighty have been thy fortunes, proud Secambria, since thy proconsuls celebrated in this arena their cruel fêtes!

As the twilight falls, the busy hum and shouts of men, borne across the river, shape themselves in our present mood to the clamour of a barbarian camp. We catch the rumble of heavy chariots, and the tramp and neighing of their chargers, and we hear the triumphal strains of martial music that proclaim the overthrow of Rome and the erection of Attila’s iron throne.

But the shadows deepen--and who are these, the pitiless heathen, that come sweeping up with the mists on the river, till they too reach the shores of the Danube and Buda’s embattled walls? _Hark!_ It is Arpád and his chieftains from the North, who celebrate in their turn, on the ruins of Attila’s palaces, with the music of lyres and the clash of cymbals, the Magyars’ conquest of Pannonia!

Slowly the moon rises, and lo! “a change comes o’er the spirit of our dream.” Turning our eyes to the citadel, crowned with its palaces as with a diadem, we catch the flicker of the Crescent above the gateways, see fluttering from the walls the pennon of the Moslem victors, and hear from the towers of the Christian churches, now minarets, the watchman’s chant, “For Allah is great, and there is no God but He.”

Yet once more memory holds up its magic crystal, and, as the moon floats in placid triumph in the sky and the solemn stars stand ranged about her, there grows over the scene yet another change. The flicker of the Crescent pales and dies. The green pennon of Islam droops and disappears. For the conquering shadow of the Cross has fallen again upon the sleeping city, and, instead of the cadence of the watchman’s voice, there is borne upon the night air now, the pious music of Christian vesper-bells.

Truly, a wondrous history!

* * * * *

It was a lovely morning on which we stepped into the train that bore us in earnest and for the third time towards the land of the Magyar, a thoroughly old-fashioned May morning. The East wind had at length taken itself off to its own quarter, and the sun shone as benignly as if it actually meant to stay. It was just one of those rare days when a person of sanguine temperament might have been justified in entertaining a certain amount of confidence in the stability even of English weather. Nature had thrown off her dingy winter mantle, and clothed herself in a garb of fairest green. Everything seemed to say, “Summer is come! Summer is come!” The lark said it as he soared high in the azure depths: the blue-bell said it as she hung her head languidly in the high grasses in quest of shade: the bees said it as the perfume of the wild flowers called them to drink of their honey: the breeze said it as it fanned the slender stems of the ragged-robins in the hedgerows, and made billows of the emerald corn: the old gentleman said it who sat opposite, and who, puffing like a steam-engine himself, arrived upon the platform just as the train was about to start.

What matter to us how the wind howl to-morrow, or the returning frost nip the newly-awakened spring-flowers? We are away, away! New costumes, new scenes, snow-capped mountains, foaming torrents, placid lakes, all chase each other through the brain in rapid succession like a perpetual dissolving view. At this distance no _contretemps_ enter into our philosophy; no ferocious Hungarian officials who mistake us for Russian spies; no keen-sighted _douaniers_ who look us through and through, as they demand whether we have anything to declare, awakening serious qualms of conscience concerning just that one little contraband something concealed in a mysterious corner of our belongings which we have determined _not_ to declare; no days when we dine with Duke Humphrey and go supperless to bed. None of these things damp our ardour as we are borne through the smiling pastures of the West.

“The channel’s as calm as a fish-pond,” remarked the fat stewardess on our arrival on board the steamer. “And there’s scarce the leastest swell on.” But--_exeunt_ passengers the following morning, woe-begone, dishevelled, wan, but hopeful.

On, past the quay, where the “merry fish-wives” cluster round the vessels, and bend under the weight of their large full creels. Through the quaint suburbs of the old Norman town, where more merry fish-wives sit surrounded by conical baskets full of red mullet, which at a short distance look like exaggerated pottles of ripe strawberries.

On, on, for we tarry nowhere, till we reach the fair capital of “La belle France.”

Here we linger for a day to call on a Hungarian merchant. He had promised to give us letters of introduction to some friends of his, who were landed proprietors in the north and south-east of Hungary, and which we believed would be very useful to us in that _terra incognita_. For such the greater portion of Magyarland still is to the ordinary tourist in spite of M. Tissot, for his interesting travels were strictly confined to Croatia, and the extreme west of the country.

The common and direct route to Hungary, and the one by which we entered it on our two previous visits, is _viâ_ Munich and Vienna. But partly because we pined to breathe once more the balmy breezes of sunny Italy and bask in the smiles of her people if for ever so short a period, and partly because, unless compelled to do so, we rarely follow the conventional routes laid down in guide-books, we decided to go through Venice, and make that place our starting point to the “polyglot” country whither we were bound; a decision that greatly astonished a little Frenchman whom we saw in the merchant’s office in question.

“You should go to Munich,” said he, “and thence to Vienna, to reach Hungary.”

“Why?” we demanded.

“Oh! that is the regular route.”

“Yes! but we do not care to go by the regular route,” we replied; “we wish to see Hungary in its byways as well as in its highways.”

With a shrug of the shoulders, and an elevation of the eyebrows, as much as to say he hoped we should find the travelling to our liking, and muttering to himself “_que les Anglais sont originals_!” he turned away.

Here another voice broke in, proceeding from a tall bony man, whose form, half hidden behind the sheets of _Galignani_, we had scarcely observed.

“There are no _diligences_, and no carriages in Hungary worth mentioning _as such_,” he exclaimed, and then subsided behind his newspaper again.

He pronounced the French word _diligence_ as we pronounce our own familiar noun, and his speech betrayed his Transatlantic origin.

“Most _Messieurs les voyageurs_,” rejoined the Frenchman, returning to the charge, and evidently unwilling to surrender his point to another--“Most _Messieurs les voyageurs_ rest satisfied with a visit to Pest.”

“_Vous avez raisong, mussoo_,” replied the American, without moving a muscle of his face, his eyes still fixed on the pages of his newspaper,--“Natur’ made Hungary a first-class country, but they’ve got a mode of locomotion there that whips all creation; as to railways they’ve none to speak of, and where you do find ’em the pace at which the lumbering old machines crawl along is a caution even to snails. If you want to do the Danube”--this time addressing himself to us--“take my advice and go _down_ stream; you’ll do it in half the time: and if you’re thinking of doing the Carpathians, what I say is, _don’t_; you’ll soon get tired of cross-country work in Hungary, I can tell you, and as to the language----”

Happily at this juncture the conversation was brought to an abrupt conclusion by the entrance of the merchant himself, who had been absent on our arrival, but who now gave us the letters of introduction of which we stood in need, assuring us we should receive much hospitality and kindness from the gentlemen to whom they were addressed, together with assistance on our travels, should any be required.

A brief examination, before leaving England, of Bradshaw’s Continental map had shown us that railway communication is now open the whole way from Venice to Pest, a distance in an almost direct line of five or six hundred miles. But the pages of that useful guide proved “too many” for us in their bewildering complications, and we were obliged to postpone the all-important question of “how to get there” till our arrival at Venice.

Arrived at that place, however, the question seemed as far from being solved as ever. The local railway guide conducted us as far as Udine, a comparatively short distance on our way, and then left us stranded high and dry on a shore of uncertainty. This being the case, we hail from the window of our hotel a passing gondola, and float off to the railway terminus to ascertain the matter for ourselves.

The hot weather had scarcely begun, and the wooden covers, with their black hearse-like fittings, had not been removed to give place to the bright-coloured awnings. As we glide through the sombre and silent ducts, walled in by ancient palaces which frown down upon us on either side, and skim over the glassy surface of the Grand Canal, the rocking motion of our dismal craft produces within us a vague and dreamy sensation; other black gondolas are following in our wake, the bell of a distant church is tolling, and being English, and taking “our pleasures sadly,” we feel we must be on our way to our own funeral, till we are jerked into consciousness and life again by the grating of the prow on the mainland close to the terminus itself.

The ticket office is of course closed, and there is not the shadow of an official to be seen anywhere. But wandering along to the great platform in the dim hope of finding some one there who can help us, we are at length cheered by the sight of a person in the garb of a railway official of some sort coming towards us from the farther end. His footsteps echo dismally in the vaulted space, and for utter loneliness in his surroundings he might have been “the last man.”

Could he inform us what time the train left for Pest? we eagerly inquired as he approached us.

“Pest! Pest!” he exclaimed, looking bewildered--he could scarcely have been more so had we inquired the way to the moon.

“The capital of Hungary,” we suggested.

“Yes! yes!” he knew it was in Hungary somewhere; but here his stock of geographical knowledge came to an end, at any rate so far as that particular branch of the subject was concerned, and, with a bow and polite wave of the hat, he passed on his way, leaving us more benighted than before.

Whilst ruminating what next to do, we heard a quick step behind us, and he again appeared.

“_Perdono, Signore!_ It strikes me that you must go hence to Vienna, and you will then have no difficulty in reaching Pest.”

Now to travel due north to Vienna, when Hungary lay in an easterly direction, was quite beyond the endurance of any enlightened travellers, particularly that of such experienced and enterprising ones as ourselves. It was not to be contemplated for a moment, but as we strolled back to our gondola, we began to wonder whether after all we had not for once been mistaken in deviating from the orthodox route and in creating one for ourselves.

On mentioning the source of our disappointment to our swarthy Charon, a bright idea seizes him.

“_Ma ecco!_ Why will not his _Eccellenza_ go to the _Signor Inspettore_ himself? He lives up those steps yonder”--pointing to a house close by.

Why not indeed? Acting on our brave gondolier’s suggestion, we go at once in quest of him.

The _Signor Inspettore_ was fortunately at home, and greeted us with the pleasant smile and ready courtesy which one invariably meets with in the people of this land. We were, however, once more doomed to failure. He knew everything apparently but that which we had come to learn; he certainly did _not_ know the way to Pest, but bidding us wait, he retired to an inner chamber, whence he soon returned bearing under his arm an enormous map, his radiant countenance proclaiming that he had at last solved the difficulty.

“_Perdono, Signore!_ I have ascertained. You must go hence to Nabrisina. There you will have to wait two hours, when another train will take you on through Cormöns to the Hungarian frontier.” And by the way he spoke of Cormöns one would have supposed it to be the extreme limits of civilisation.

“Not many strangers travel this way to Hungary,” added he.

“But do not _your_ people sometimes travel?” we inquired.

“_Ma no!_” was the reply, given in that sharp, incisive tone in which every Italian pronounces that latter monosyllable. “We do not often travel, and to Hungary never. _Basta!_ the climate of Hungary _e una clima da Diavolo_;” adding with a shrug of the shoulders--the full significance of which we duly appreciated--“_Perdono, Signore!_ Only the _English_ go there.”

The moon had risen a full round orb as, the object of our quest accomplished, we once more stepped into our gondola and, gliding away, soon formed one of the many black specks crossing her silvery pathway on the great Lagoon.

The brilliantly-lighted shops in the colonnades of the Piazza di San Marco remind us that we have still something to do before we are fully equipped for our Hungarian travels. We had, as I have said, seen Hungary on two previous occasions; seen it, that is, in its highways. This time we meant to see it in its byways also; for which purpose it was necessary that we should equip ourselves for that cross-country travelling of which the American had hinted such dark things. Experience, too, that stern schoolmaster, likewise taught us the desirability of rendering ourselves independent, as far as possible, of the accommodation to be met with at small out-of-the-way inns. For these, however full of promise externally, are inwardly, except in rare instances, replete with disappointment; and black bread, _kukoricza_, bacon, and “_paprika hendl_”--a national dish, in which a fowl that, in blissful unconsciousness of the immediate future, has been picking up the crumbs that fell from the traveller’s table as he partook of his first course, may, at his last, appear in the form of a hasty stew, thickened with red pepper--are the only things to be found wherewith to fortify the inner man.

In addition, therefore, to a case of hermetically-sealed provisions brought with us from England, we here invested in a number of small items in the culinary line necessary for our anticipated wayside bivouacs, including a singular contrivance for easy cooking, whereby the mysterious operation of roasting meat in a species of saucepan is accomplished; the vessel in question being called a _cazarola_. Besides these, there was yet one other item we had to provide ourselves with; namely, some dozen yards of stout rope, a very necessary adjunct to cross-country travel in Hungary.

For the necessities of the outer man we were already well provided by the possession of a large _bunda_--a relic of our former travels. This magnificent garment of Hungarian invention is a glorious institution, than which in the whole sartorial art there is none so grandly adapted to its purpose, or to the climate of the country, where the changes are exceedingly rapid. The chill which immediately follows the setting of the sun often causes the temperature to sink 20° Réaumur in the short space of two hours, and without this garment the traveller will very probably fall a victim to the Hungarian fever occasioned by the exhalation from the marshes. In fact, as the Venetian station-master delicately hinted, Hungary, like England, may be said to have “no climate, only weather.”

The majestic Alfőld, or plains of Hungary--the European Pampas as they have been called--though hardly as boundless as the ocean, are scarcely less fickle: now soft and tender under a calm and cloudless sky as they slumber in the dreamy haze of sunny noontide, now all glorious in the resplendent hues of the out-goings and in-comings of Day; anon fierce and tumultuous, as a violent wind sweeps over them, which, meeting with no obstacle whereon to spend its fury, whirls shrieking in frantic circles like an angry demon, tosses the trembling and resistless hillocks of sand into billows, or, with a hissing noise, lashes them into fragments like ocean spray. Here also, in summer, as on the great African desert, the traveller crossing the sandy wastes is often misled by the delusive mirage. In the distance a lake, or village, or lonely _csárda_ (tavern) lures him on, and causes him to lose his way.

No landscape, however, is so impressive as that afforded by these plains--plains so vast that they appear to embrace the Infinite; where the sun at setting seems to sink into the very bosom of the earth, and the stars burn red to the verge of the horizon. Who can describe the awful grandeur and stillness that reigns over this boundless region, as Night comes hastening on, bringing with it the stars, to hang like silver lamps in the sapphire deeps; or the beauty of the heavenly arch when the “milky way” is stretched across the zenith like a spangled veil, and the planets burn with such a steady light that they seem to cast a path of glory athwart the plains beneath?

Fitful as the climate is, there are however, happily for the traveller, two months in the year when he may almost depend upon fine weather, viz. May and June. The long winter’s frost and snow have at length by that time passed away; the intense heat of July and August has not yet begun, nor the autumnal rains which render the Hungarian roads (bad enough at the best of seasons) absolutely impassable.

After two more deliriously happy days at Venice, spent in loitering about its colonnades, sitting in the beautiful Piazza di San Marco listening to the strains of the military bands and sometimes floating over the glassy surface of the canals, we bid adieu to the “Bride of the Sea.”

In the railway carriage with us were two priests whom we had met at the hotel “Due Torri” at Verona, and who were, they informed us, to be our fellow-travellers as far as Udine. There was also a lady from Carniola on her way to Laibach, whose head was covered with a kind of Spanish mantilla and who spoke Slovenic, a dialect of the Wendish.

As soon as the train had fairly started, the priests, taking off their broad-brimmed beaver hats and exchanging them for more comfortable skull-caps, began reading their breviaries, following the contents with a motion of the lips, but without utterance of the faintest sound.

We now pass through an undulating country rich in cultivation, and olives and mulberry-trees take the place of vines. Our route leads us through the classic land of Illyria, a name rendered immortal by the poems of Virgil and Dante. After leaving Izonzo, we reach the ancient town of Monfalcone, situated within a few miles of the once famous city of Aquileia, where the Emperor Augustus often resided--a mere village now, but containing, in the time of the Romans, a population of 100,000 souls.

The train soon begins to ascend one of those barren and rugged hills which form the north-eastern boundary of the Adriatic Sea. Here all vegetation ceases except that of stunted herbage, and as far as eye can reach nothing is visible but rocky and conical hills.

As the engine labours up the steep gradient the blue waters of the Adriatic suddenly burst upon the view. To the left stretch the marshy plains which, extending over a vast area, constitute the “Littorale,” or northern shores. Away, in the distance, rise the purple mountains of Istria, whilst below, embosomed in green hills, lies Trieste. The scene is calm, beautiful, and majestic in the evening light, recalling many a sad association connected with the life of the author of the “_Divina Commedia_,” as well as many an episode of early lore.

[Illustration]

Chapter II.

The Puszta.

“Is there anything to be seen here?” we inquired of a pretty Slovene girl, who, in short red skirt, velvet bodice, and top-boots, was stumping about the platform as we alighted from the train the next morning, and at last stood on Hungarian soil.

Knowing just sufficient German to comprehend the nature of our question, she turned round, and pointing first in the direction of the desolate little station itself, then at a group of sheds opposite, and finally at a long straight road which apparently led nowhere, she showed two rows of pearly teeth, and looking up at us archly, burst out laughing at her own humour.

[Illustration]

Pragerhof, the place at which we have just arrived--the junction of the Vienna and Trieste line--is in very truth a dreary spot to be set down at; but wishing to reach Sió-Fok the next day, it was necessary to break our journey here. Nothing could present a more utterly forlorn aspect, and why the spot should have been favoured with a name at all is an enigma, seeing that it consists solely--as our _naïve_ little Slovene had intimated--of the station itself, three or four sheds, and the small _fogado_ (inn). Probably, however, the signification may have reference to a town or village hard by; “hard by,” that is to say, in a Hungarian sense, for in this part of the country, where villages are few and far between, people often call men “neighbours” who live twenty, thirty, and even forty miles distant, and not unfrequently convey their farm produce to fairs and markets full as many miles away.

We have now reached the threshold of the great plains, and, looking north, south, east, and west, not a sign of habitation is visible; nothing, in short, but the straight road already alluded to, and the long line of railway which vanishes only with the horizon.

The lonely _fogado_ in which we have come to anchor till the morrow forms a tolerable example of all wayside inns in Hungary, except in the position of the stranger’s bedroom, which, instead of being on the ground-floor, is in this instance approached by a movable ladder. The _salle à manger_, as is invariably the case, not only adjoins, but commands an extensive view of the kitchen; and the traveller can--if he feel disposed--watch as he sits at table the interesting process of the cutting up and frying of his cutlets, and stewing of his _paprika hendl_; as well as the slaughter of the innocent itself. For our present hosts form no exception to the generality of Hungarian innkeepers in the very open manner in which they carry into effect their culinary assassinations, and a scuffle, a sharp, piteous cry, followed by a “thud,” and the sight of a quivering victim hanging head downwards to a door-nail in full view, were our immediate welcome to the shelter of this solitary little inn.

We are here plunged all at once into the very vortex of the Magyar language, which no other south of the Volga aids the uninitiated stranger to interpret, but which was, nevertheless, already spoken in this country by a Turanian people of kindred race at the Roman conquest of Pannonia.

The landlord of the inn, who is a Magyar, can only just manage to render himself intelligible in German; whilst the young woman we addressed on our arrival at the station, and whom we find to be the waiting-maid, can only speak Hungarian and her mother-tongue, a Sláv dialect spoken west of the Hungarian frontier.

The vast prairies we have now entered, so deeply interesting in their historical associations, cover the prodigious area of 37,400 English square miles, and the insular mind almost loses itself in contemplating their extent.

Although Hungary contains within its embrace mountainous districts of vast extent, and beauty unsurpassed by any country in Europe, yet its principal characteristics may be said to be plains and rivers. In some portions of the former, which are as level as the ocean, the soil is in a high state of cultivation; others are mere sandy wastes; whilst in others again, Nature having spread a green and flowery carpet of her own weaving, thousands of wild horses and cattle are allowed to roam over it unfettered, and these, wandering about in immense herds, form one of the chief features of the _Puszta_ landscape.

Here the sportsman may find ample food for his gun; for the marshes in the vicinity of the great rivers abound in wild fowl, particularly in the spring, when they are the haunt of storks, which may be seen pluming themselves all day long amongst the tall reeds and feathery grasses, or else leading their little family of storklings out for an airing on the confines of their watery domain. Flocks of noisy plovers too are everywhere seen, and not unfrequently a pelican; whilst throughout the length and breadth of the Alfőld, the harsh scream of the falcon is heard, wheeling overhead as it scours the air in quest of smaller birds, or swoops down upon a marmot.

Scattered about these vast steppes, at long distances apart, are towns and villages. In the neighbourhood of the post roads they occur every three or four hours; but in other districts farther in the interior the traveller may often journey a whole day by carriage or _leiterwagen_, in going from one village to the next.

No wonder is it then that this thinly populated region has ever been considered the El-Dorado of brigands, who until recently, that is to say until ten or twenty years ago, kept the otherwise peaceful dwellers of the plains in a perpetual state of terror and alarm. Many of the peasants and small landed gentry, however--paradoxical as it may appear--were known to harbour these “heroes;” thus encouraging brigandage whilst trembling for their own safety. In fact, so daring and numerous at one time were these robbers, that they often demanded board and lodging from the inhabitants as a right; whilst so lonely were the majority of the farmsteads, that the occupants, completely at their mercy, were compelled to yield without resistance to their demands. It was even customary a few years ago--a custom which, I believe, still exists in some remote parts of Hungary--for the inhabitants to pay what is called _felelat_, or “black-mail,” to these freebooters, to secure themselves from the plunder of their cattle, just as formerly existed in Scotland. Brigandage in Hungary is, in fact, of “noble” origin, for, intrenched within their strong castles and encompassed by fortifications, many of the nobles in the fifteenth century exercised the function of robber-knights, enlisting numbers of the peasantry in their exploits.

Amongst these brigands of modern time were men of education and family; not only this, it has even been darkly hinted that magnates, who at one time held responsible positions under government, have been more than suspected of joining these marauders for the purpose of recruiting their enfeebled finances. The ruling powers have done their utmost to suppress these bandit hordes by offering large sums in the shape of “blood-money” for the capture of the leaders of the gangs, or the betrayal of their hiding-places to the police, but this has never been an easy task to accomplish in a country where so many of the inhabitants sympathise with the delinquents.

The Hungarians are a manly, brave, and chivalrous race, but lately emerged from barbarism, for the Turks held the greater part of their country in possession until a comparatively recent date; and there no doubt exists to some extent, even at the present time, an innate disposition in the minds of some--a disposition not confined to one class of society in particular, but existing in the highest as well as in the lowest--to wink at, if not actually condone, all offences of whatever kind, provided they have been committed with valour and daring. These, of course, are very questionable ethics, but this state of things has always existed in Hungary; and far greater than the fears for their own safety has been the chivalrous feeling which has caused so many of the Hungarians to shelter these robbers, and treat them as heroes when pursued by the hands of justice. For this sentiment they are probably indebted as much to their past history as to the character of their surroundings. Men’s minds are much more influenced by external nature than we are often aware, and these limitless plains on which the Hungarians gaze from morn till eve have no doubt imbued them, unconsciously to themselves, with a notion of freedom of action, fettered by no boundaries and ruled by no human laws.

So daring at one period were these robber-bands that they were occasionally known to attack caravans of merchandise even in broad day; whilst the extent to which brigandage prevailed only a few years ago may be inferred from the fact of there having been no fewer than twelve hundred of these robber-criminals imprisoned at the same time within the walls of the fortress of Szegedin--the capital of the Alfőld--amongst whom was the most daring and celebrated bandit modern Hungary has ever known; a man who rejoiced in the euphemistic appellation of Alexander Rose (Rózsa Sándor), and whose particular form of the profession was cattle-lifting, but who only eleven years ago attacked with his robber-band a train on its way through the plains, and is said to have murdered during his “brilliant career” upwards of a hundred persons. This “dashing hero,” who was pelted with flowers by the peasant girls when he was at length captured by the police, died, scarcely more than a year ago, a natural death in the citadel where he was confined, having escaped the punishment he so richly deserved by the clemency of the Emperor of Austria, who is said to possess an extreme dislike to signing death-warrants.

The term often applied to these Hungarian brigands is that of _szégény légény_, or “poor lads,”--a term no doubt due, in the first instance, to the fact that many were originally fugitives from the Imperial conscription; whilst the romantic sentiment entertained concerning them and their lives arises from the intense and very natural repugnance to the Austrian army existing amongst all classes. The Magyars are radicals in all political and national affairs, hence their tolerance of, if not actual desire to shield, those who seek to evade the Imperial conscription, no less irksome to the inhabitants of this country than it was to the Italians when under the same yoke.

Previous to 1848, a period that marks what the people of this country call the “War of Independence,” various forms of conscription were in force, some of which were especially obnoxious to the Hungarians. Many, therefore, fled from the hard fate it imposed, preferring freedom, with self-inflicted exile, to serving a foreign power. Some sought refuge in the wooded districts of the mountains, others in the vast fields of Indian corn found on the plains, in whose green labyrinths they could not easily be tracked. Concealed here until exhausted nature could hold out no longer, they at length crept from their hiding-places to begin a vagabond existence, begging of the peasantry as they wandered from place to place, with the shed of some lonely tavern, the favourite haunt of brigands, as their only shelter by night.

No wonder then that these “poor lads,” after pursuing for a time a life of vagrancy, should end in becoming robbers likewise, the more so as they knew full well they would be protected from the vigilance of the _pandúrok_ by the peasantry, who, as I have said, were frequently known to conceal them in their houses when pursued by those officers of justice.

The “poor lads,” however, differ somewhat from the orthodox brigand. The former plunder in order to live, and rarely commit murder, their weapons seldom consisting of anything more formidable than a bludgeon. But the brigand “proper,” besides being armed to the teeth, wears a cuirass, and carries in addition to his lance, loaded hatchet and brace of pistols, a lasso, in the use of which he is as dexterous as the Spaniards of South America, and forms in appearance, with his slouching “sombrero,” bronzed chest and flowing black hair, as noble a type of his order as any to be found in the mountain fastnesses of Calabria. But no matter whether he be an orthodox brigand or “poor lad,” when one of special notoriety happens to be captured he is, as in the case of Rózsa Sándor, pelted with flowers by the “_kisleány_,” or dark little maidens of the Alfőld, who always sympathise with these daring freebooters, of whatever type.

During our present visit to Hungary some alarm was created by the announcement that three hundred banditti under the leadership of Milan, the notorious chief, had crossed the Danube from Servia, and were on their way to the Hungarian plains. A battalion of troops, however, sent to welcome them on the shores of the river, opposite Gradista, drove them back upon Belgrade by a more hasty retreat than they apparently expected, accompanied by an intimation in explosive terms that Hungary had quite as many brigands as she wanted without drawing upon the resources of Servia.

The “_Alfőld_”--which literally interpreted signifies lowlands, in contradistinction to “_Felfőld_”--by which the Hungarians designate the mountainous districts of their land, is, strictly speaking, confined to that portion of the country which lies to the north of the river Marős and east of the Danube. It may however be appropriately applied to the whole of the plains, not excepting the “_Pettaurfeld_,” or “little Hungarian plains,” as the lowlands lying between Pragerhof and Lake Balaton are called, and upon which we have just entered. In the winter they are like a frozen sea--one great and boundless wilderness of white. The flocks that roam these rich prairies free and unfettered in summer-time are gone, and the tinkling of their bells is heard no longer; all are housed in huge clusters of sheds, where they low plaintively as they dream of the sunny herbage of the past. No sound is audible save the hoarse croak of the raven, which seems but to awaken the dreariness of the scene and make the silence live; whilst the very sun himself looks frozen as he peers forth from the pale blue sky.

It is at this season that the stranger, unused to such scenes, is impressed with the awful loneliness and stillness of his surroundings, together with the profound majesty and immensity of nature, as his eye, wandering over the vast expanse of white, traces no boundary, and his ear detects no sound of living thing.

In the spring, when the lingering winter snow has at length melted, and the warm sun showers his blessed life-giving rays upon the dormant earth, the shepherd with grateful and rejoicing heart once more wanders forth with his flock to the green pastures; and in the cultivated districts the husbandman, shouldering his simple and primitive implements of agriculture, just scratches the surface of the rich alluvial soil, which--as some one says--only needs to be “tickled” and sown with seed, to laugh all over at harvest-time with smiling grain.

[Illustration]

It is glorious summer now, and as we sit under an arbour of vines in the little sun-baked, sandy garden of our _fogado_, there come to us across the plains the plaintive sounds of a shepherd’s flute, and the pensive cadence of tinkling bells. Strolling off in the direction of the sound, we come to a large flock of sheep browsing on the short and tender herbage, whilst the shepherd, in his shaggy sheepskin cloak, wanders about amongst them, playing a small instrument here called a _telinka_, and looking, wrapped in his _bunda_ with its long wool outside, strangely in keeping with the flocks he is tending. About half a mile distant is another shaggy, fur-clothed man watching a herd of long-haired goats, whilst farther still three dark spots on the silent landscape indicate the existence of a gipsy encampment, the shepherd and the gipsy forming two of the most marked characteristics of the Alfőld, the one giving to it a pastoral, the other, with his little colony of tents, an almost Eastern aspect.

The shepherd’s life is a lonely and monotonous one. During the summer he remains night and day with his flock, and for whole months together holds communication with no one, except with some other of his class with whom he comes in contact, as he wanders from pasture to pasture with his woolly family. His life however, though lonely, is not so dreary as might be imagined; the Alfőld to him is a Garden of Eden, a smiling land of a bounteous heaven: his isolated and pastoral existence frequently leads him to be a poet, and to the idyllic music of the _telinka_, a little instrument he manufactures himself, and as primitive as that by which Pan of old awoke the stillness of the dawn, he composes rhymes full of simple poetry and pathos.

We had wandered fully two miles across the vast and trackless plains, yet lingered till the sun began to sink below the horizon and the chill of evening warned us to return. It is in regions like these that the wonderful phenomenon of the _afterglow_ is best seen. As the sun leaves the earth which it has gladdened with its smiles, and the last crimson streak fades slowly in the west, twilight’s shadows gather over the warm bosom of the plains, and a cold white vapour begins to rise from the marshes; the shadow lingers for a while, till suddenly, as if by the agency of a magician’s wand, there comes a wondrous flush of glory--_whence_ none can tell--that once more bathes both earth and heaven in a flood of gold and amber. But soon, fainter grow the colours in the west, colder and more tangible the snake-like vapours ascending from the hollows, deeper the transparent arc above, till evening at length sinks into the embrace of night. As we turn our faces homewards all sound is hushed; the wild fowl have sought their nests in the thick sedges which border the marshes, the marmots their holes in the warm sand; and the shepherd, weary with his day’s watch, wrapped in his _bunda_, lies stretched on the darkling ground fast asleep, beside him his faithful dog, whose paws twitch spasmodically in an imaginary race after some erratic sheep that has doubtless disturbed his equanimity during the hours of day, and which he now chases in his dreams. From the distant camp the smoke curls idly upwards in graceful wreaths above the ruddy fire; in the foreground a group of oxen chew the cud, and everything is suggestive of repose.

Beautiful, however, as are our surroundings in their wondrous breadth of calm, we are after all but gregarious animals, and two hours later, whilst sitting in the crazy wooden balcony of the _fogado_, I find myself sighing for the rosy fruit of the Lotus, that I may eat and again mingle with the gay and festive throng in the Piazza di San Marco, and catch an echo of the music that so delighted me when there. F., on the contrary, like Odysseus, casts his mind forwards to the Ithaka of his love, the region of the snowy Carpathians, whither our steps are tending. But we both retire for the night with the conviction that Pragerhof in its absence of human life and maddening isolation is just one of those places in which more than one day’s sojourn must end in suicide.

That melancholy catastrophe was at any rate averted for the present, for we found ourselves still alive on the following morning, when the little waiting-maid came stumbling and stumping up the ladder, bringing coffee as a preliminary to toilet and breakfast; which ceremonies completed, we welcome as a rescuing angel the train that at a quarter-past nine draws leisurely up to the station.

[Illustration]

Chapter III.

A Caution To Snails.

The day had dawned with a glorious awakening. How bright and fair all was under its glistening veil of sparkling dewdrops, as we sat by the open door of the _fogado_ and partook of our simple breakfast! Beyond were the green plains and the distant sea-like horizon; near us broad vine-trellises, through which the sunshine flickered like a shower of gold. From afar came the distant lowing of cattle and the muffled bark of a sheep-dog; whilst all around us was so still, so very still, that we might have been in the vast prairies of the New World. The birds, playing at hide-and-seek amongst the reddening, dust-covered vine-leaves, or perched high up in the sooty eaves of the little station, chirped and bubbled over with song, as if their smoky and sandy domain had been the umbrageous aisles of some lonely forest. How grateful they were for their meagre mercies as they carolled forth their hymn of praise this dewy golden morning whilst we waited for the train, how glad they seemed to live, and what joy was there in their little lives as the Slovene waiting-maid scattered towards them the crumbs from the table-cloth of the restaurant!

[Illustration]

Our train was announced to leave at ten minutes to ten; but overdue, it did not arrive from Trieste until half-past eight o’clock, and how could any one be so unreasonable as to expect it to be got ready to start again in the short space of one hour and twenty minutes? At the time specified the engine-driver, seated on a heap of sand outside the platform, was dozing over his pipe, and the guard leisurely finishing his breakfast in the inn kitchen. And why not? No one thinks of hurrying himself in Hungary, where everybody has plenty of time for everything.

The trains, punctual enough in their departure from large stations, are wholly indifferent as to the time they either arrive at or start from the smaller ones, which are generally situated in districts where persons take life easily, and with whom the railway authorities appear to think an hour or so out of the twenty-four can make no possible difference.

Taking our places at last, and dragging slowly on, we pass here and there, at long intervals, true specimens of Hungarian villages, with their low-roofed one-storied houses, and cemeteries filled with small red, blue, and white crosses, which, just showing above the rank grass, look from a distance like wild flowers growing in a meadow. The traveller seems here to have been suddenly carried back to some remote period of the world’s history, everything is so heavy and so slow. At the stations at which we stop, curious-shaped vehicles are waiting to take the arrivals to towns and villages--who shall say how many miles away? Long waggons made simply of planks of wood nailed together, and others with open ladder-like sides, drawn by three horses abreast, or small light carts, called _szekérs_, to which, by a most uncomfortable arrangement, one poor, lean, miserable horse is harnessed to a pole. All are driven by strange-looking men in sheepskin cloaks or hussar-jackets called _mentes_, embroidered in divers colours of needlework, and wearing such full white trousers that they look like petticoats. Stranger people still get into these vehicles--women wearing sheepskin cloaks like the men, strange head-gear and top-boots--and, leaving the enclosure which surrounds the station, jog away over quagmires that seem to lead to nowhere, or to some distant world far beyond our ken.

[Illustration]

Turf is burnt in the engine, so that the speed, as may be imagined, is not very alarming--its “linked sweetness long drawn out” scarcely exceeding ten miles an hour; besides which we linger at the various stations, time, as we have seen, being no object in this primitive country.

Railway travelling in Hungary has in fact frequently been known to produce in the passenger--especially if he happen to have come from Western Europe--a species of temporary insanity; the particular form which the malady assumes causing the unfortunate sufferer to lose for the nonce all sense of his own individuality, and to imagine himself the “Wandering Jew,” destined to go on to all time.

_À-propos_ of the slowness of the Hungarian locomotives, it is related that a certain peasant, when asked one day by a friend why he did not take the train to the market town, replied, “I have no time to-day; I must walk, or I shall arrive there too late.”

As we wait, the villagers, leaning over the wooden palisades, gaze at us wonderingly, or gossip with the guard; the women clothed in the shortest of short petticoats, worn over a number of white under-garments frilled at the edges, and which, hanging a few inches below each other and starched almost to the stiffness of a board, are intended to serve as a hoop to keep the top skirt out.

It is a festival of some sort, and, as we approach the villages, the cracked bells from the church towers are chiming away joyously, and all the people are dressed in their red-letter day attire, the women with black, red, or green bodices, full white sleeves and white chemisettes embroidered at the throat. Quaint children stand beside them, who, dressed in every respect precisely like their elders, even to top-boots, look like small men and women seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

Entering the district of the river Drave, we are all at once surrounded by low, undulating hills which rise out of the plains, and wherever we turn our eyes, we see persons on their way to distant churches; the men walking together in front, and the women following at a respectful distance. The roads are muddy, and the women gather up their voluminous petticoats over their top-boots in a most exemplary manner; whilst the children, emulating the example of their mothers and holding up their little petticoats likewise, form one of the most amusing spectacles possible.

[Illustration]

Presently we reach a large town, situated in the midst of what appears to be a ploughed field, the houses so wretched that they seem not to have been built, but to have grown there like cabbages or mangel-wurzel, or to have been heaved up from beneath by ill-conditioned and untidy gnomes.

Whilst staying at this place, persons arrive from distant and unseen towns far away beyond the limits of the visible horizon, in vehicles more strange even than any we have yet seen, and such as might have existed in the camp of Attila. A score of tired but patient men and women are lying on their bundles, waiting the arrival of the down train from Buda-Pest to take them to their destination, whilst others are standing or walking about the platform; women, whose heads and faces enveloped in dark-blue kerchiefs, and sleeves padded at the shoulders, give them a strange incongruous look, half-Turkish, half-European; men--what splendid fellows! with manly faces bronzed by the fierce summer sun of the Alfőld, and with limbs as muscular as those of athletes.

The times of the arrival and departure of the trains are indicated in a somewhat primitive manner on a slate; and whilst we are wondering what on earth can be keeping us here so long, we see a carriage drawn by six horses and surrounded by a cloud of dust, coming along the road at a terrific pace, the horses galloping furiously under the lash of the driver’s long whip. Possibly it is for this we have been tarrying. A tall, graceful, and very pretty woman descends from the carriage--a kind of _calèche_. Two men, one of whom wears a feather in his hat, the other a bunch of wild-flowers--servants apparently, who had previously arrived with the luggage--stoop and kiss her hand as they see her into the train; and as soon as the engine-driver and guard have charged their pipes afresh, the heavy, lumbering machine slides out of the station, and we drag on again as though it were a matter of the most sublime indifference as to what time we arrive at the end of our journey--if we ever do.

In process of time, however, we do reach Gross Kanizsa, where our line of railway joins that from Agram and Vienna. At this place, which contains twelve thousand inhabitants, the sandy enclosure of the station is so full of girls in holiday attire that it looks like a flower-garden, and we feel we are in Hungary indeed, the land of beautiful women. Was anything half so ravishing as those little scarlet leather top-boots embroidered at the side, and which, adorned with rosettes, look like scarlet clappers as they peep forth from the bell-like skirts? What little darlings are the wearers, with their demure but coquettish faces, some blonde, some brunette, the plaits of their hair--which hang loosely down the back--ornamented with many-coloured ribbons reaching almost to the heels! Near some of these Kanizsa belles stand their brothers or sweethearts, wearing embroidered cloaks or little jaunty hussar-jackets, thickly covered with bright silver buttons, and white plumes in their small caps.

Whilst waiting at this station, we are reminded of a very different scene that occurred the last time we were here. We had just arrived by train from Croatia, and on going into the buffet, which we found already crowded with passengers, many of whom were not only Croatians, but Servians, Slavonians and people from Lower Hungary, we could not help observing that our entrance seemed to be regarded as an intrusion. Seeing vacant seats at a table near the centre of the room, round which our fellow-travellers were already partaking of a table-d’hôte repast, we also took our places, wondering greatly at the disturbance which our presence evidently created.

In a few moments several persons who had been sitting near us, with a surly glance and muttered exclamation, withdrew from the table, and walked to the farther end of the room. It was impossible to help perceiving that an insult was intended, although, as may be imagined, we were perfectly ignorant of the cause.

Shortly after this, as we were doing our best to swallow the affront together with our soup--a doubtful compound called _ungarischer sauerkraut_, consisting of cabbage cut into thin strips and immersed in a colourless liquid in which small slices of sausage were floating--and washing down the whole with draughts of consoling _badacsony_, made of grapes grown on a mountain near Lake Balaton, a gentleman came across from the opposite side of the table and took his seat beside us. Addressing us in Latin, the frequent medium of communication between educated Englishmen and Magyars of Central Hungary, he explained the cause of his countrymen’s behaviour, and apologised profoundly for the rudeness to which we had been subjected. They had, he informed us, taken us for Russians, the political feeling against whom was very strong during that particular crisis of the Russo-Turkish war, then just at its height, especially amongst Hungarians of the lower provinces; but having been in England himself, though not for a sufficiently long period to acquire the language, he had at once recognised to what nation we belonged.

“_Pileus ejus_,” said he, looking towards me, and alluding to my hat, which was of the species familiarly known as “pork-pie,” turned up with a broad band of fur--“the Russian ladies wear precisely such hats as the one you have on, and take my word for it, wherever you go in Hungary, you will be mistaken for a Russian, unless you change it for another.”

Our train lingered here an hour, and whilst walking about the platform, we were more than ever struck with the variety of nationalities met with in this singular country. Standing round the door of the restaurant was a group of men, whose soft and effeminate tongue, delicate features, and supple figures, contrasting strongly with the manly energy and powerful physique of the Magyars, proclaimed them to be Yougo-Slávs from Croatia and Slavonia; there were others again, whose sandalled legs and feet, and lambswool caps the shape of mops, declared them to be Wallachs from Transylvania or the Lower Danube; besides Servians from their little colony in the capital, and men on their way to their homes in the Northern Carpathians, all of whom our previous acquaintance with Hungary enabled us at once to recognise.

Amongst the many peculiarities which exist in this interesting country, there is not one that perhaps strikes the stranger so forcibly as the variety of races. By far the largest portion of it is inhabited by the Magyars, or ruling people; next to them in importance come the Wallachs, occupying the most eastern portion of the territory; whilst sprinkled here and there over the vast area which constitutes the Alfőld are little colonies of Germans, exclusive of the so-called Saxons and Szeklérs in the south-east, each of whom forms a distinct nationality. All the above-named races, however, inhabit the central and south-eastern portion of the kingdom; but, in the entire realm of the Magyar, no fewer than eight languages are spoken, not including the various Sláv dialects.

In the south, divided from Bosnia and Servia by the river Save, lie the Hungarian provinces of Croatia and Slavonia, peopled by Croat-Serbs, whilst that portion of territory which extends south-west of the Northern Carpathians is inhabited by Slovaks, who border immediately on the Poles of Gallicia and the Tcheks of Moravia; the province south-east of the Northern Carpathians being inhabited by Rusniaks, or Ruthenians, there being no fewer than seventeen thousand Slavs in the dual-Monarchy. Besides these nationalities, there are also colonies of Greeks, Arnauts, and Armenians, spread over various parts of the kingdom.

The chief cause of the existence of these various races is the frequent invasions, and final occupation of the greater portion of it by the Turks, who in the fifteenth century, penetrating into the very heart of Aryan Christendom, desolated the whole face of Hungary by fire and sword. Not only did these invaders and subsequent conquerors of the country lay waste the entire surface of the fertile plains, but by burning the towns and villages, rendered them wholly uninhabitable. To such an extent did the incursions of the Moslem hordes affect the region of the Alfőld, that it is only within the present century that the Magyars may be truly said to have begun to recover their lost ground.

It is a common saying amongst Hungarians that “where the Turk treads no grass grows,” and so effectually was the country rendered desolate by the ravages of this foe, that after their final expulsion in 1777, by a series of battles nobly fought by the Hungarians, immigrants were called in, and encouraged by grants of land to re-occupy the ruined villages, and cultivate the soil rendered barren and unfruitful by the hated Moslem.

Thus Hungary became what we find her to-day,--a country peopled by many nations, all subject to the parent State; each retaining, besides, its language, its own costume, and distinct characteristics; and continuing--and this is perhaps the strangest fact of all--as isolated in point of individuality of existence and territorial position as if each race constituted a separate nation in itself. Hungary is, in fact, unlike any other country in the world, and there is a novelty and a charm about it that fills the traveller with delight.

“When I hear its name mentioned,” exclaimed a popular German author, “my waistcoat seems too tight for me; an ocean stirs within me; in my heart awaken the traditionary exploits of long ago, the poetry and song of the Middle Ages. Its history is that of yore; the same heroism lives within its borders, the names of its heroes alone have changed.” And he is right. There is an inborn chivalry and heroism in the character of the Magyars--traits evinced not only in their past, but recent history; the same noble and dauntless spirit that dwelt in their heroes of the Middle Ages lives in them now, and there is a bold and fearless independence, a straightforwardness, and high principle that cannot fail to win the love and admiration of all who really know them.

Returning to our places in the train, we observe standing near the steps of our compartment a lady engaged in earnest conversation with a poor woman clad in the costume of the Alfőld peasantry, and holding in her arms a little golden-haired child of about four years old. The woman was weeping bitterly, and the fragile body of the child was convulsed with suppressed sobs.

[Illustration]

Our interest in both mother and child was kindled in a moment, and we subsequently learnt from a German-speaking Magyar who travelled with us that the lady was taking the little creature--the child of one of her husband’s _földmevelök_ (farm-labourers)--to the hospital at Pest, to undergo a surgical operation that might detain her there for several months.

The parting of mother and child was one of the most touching things I ever witnessed. We could not understand their lip-language, but the heaven-born utterance of human love needs no mortal speech to express its meaning, and we _felt_ all that their feeble, broken words conveyed.

No sooner had the train left the platform than--the necessity of restraining her feelings past--burying her face in the cushions, “Little Nell” (for so we called her) gave way to a wild burst of grief.

“_Anyám! Anyám!_” (Mother! mother!) was her agonising cry.

Poor child! like many another, she had entered all too soon within the portals of the “sanctuary of sorrow.” Did anything, I wonder, whisper to her heart that which on inquiry at the hospital we subsequently ascertained, viz. that she was not to see her mother again till they were folded in each other’s arms in Paradise?

The Hungarian gentleman sitting opposite wiped his spectacles, whilst F., turning abruptly to the window, began taking a most unwonted interest in the features of the country, and I doubt whether there was a dry eye between us, so truly does

“One touch of nature make the whole world kin.”

But we are approaching our destination; and having passed through an immense forest of oaks, once notorious as the hiding-place of robber bands, and forming even yet a refuge for those _szegény legény_, or “poor lads,” over whom the popular sentiment of the country has thrown such a mistaken charm, we emerge again into the open plains, and see beyond us an azure lake lying calmly in the bosom of undulating hills. To the right stretches a vast tract of uncultivated land, roamed by wild horses, which with manes flying madly gallop away as we draw near, until they are almost out of sight and form mere dark specks in the distance, and we soon enter the swampy ground which marks the vicinity of the lake.

The Platten-See, or Lake Balaton as it is often designated--both names being derived from the Sláv word “_blats_,” signifying swamp or marsh--is the second largest lake in Europe. Although bounded on the northern side by lofty hills, to the south it is almost shoreless, except here and there where fishermen, availing themselves of the gentle undulations of sandy soil, have erected rude huts of plaited reeds. In many places tall grasses eight or ten feet high cover the marshes in dense jungly masses, and the surrounding country is so inundated that the whole, save on the northern shore, presents an appearance of a series of lakes.

Opposite Böglar, in the midst of vine-clad hills, rises the conspicuous mountain Badacson, from the grapes of which the celebrated wine is made; whilst jutting far into the lake a rocky promontory, crowned by an ancient abbey, stands boldly out against the fainter outline of the more distant hills.

And then we reach Sió-Fok, and our railway journey is at an end at last.

“Little Nell,” the golden-haired child, had long ago sobbed herself to sleep. That blessed nepenthe which mercifully follows childhood’s sorrow had folded her in the peace of heaven, and there was no sign of pain on her placid upturned face, as with an unspoken “God bless her!” we left the train for the steamer which was waiting to take us across the lake to Fűred.

[Illustration]

Chapter IV.

Gipsy Music.

“Magyars! Magyars!” I once heard a lady exclaim, who was not quite so well up in the science of ethnology as she might have been in these enlightened days, and who evidently confounded them in a nebulous kind of way with the natives of Madagascar or some other out-of-the-way island in the Indian or South Pacific Ocean--“a very interesting people, I dare say, but as to myself I never could feel interested in those poor savage Blacks!”

What then is the origin of these men of the house and lineage of Arpád--this non-Aryan people whom Voltaire describes as _une nation fière et généreuse, le fléau de ses tyrans et l’appui de ses souverains_, and who, constituting the only Turanian race that has ever been recognised as forming a portion of the great European family, are well worthy of careful study, yet of whom the majority of persons know so little, and some nothing at all?

They are the descendants of a Finnish people, who, emigrating southwards through the passes of the Carpathians from their home in the far North, approached Hungary in 886.

The word “Magyar” (pronounced Mad-yar), however, is of very ancient origin, and has baffled the wisest philological heads to determine its precise meaning. It was supposed in the Middle Ages to have been derived from Magog, son of Japhet, the popular superstition of that period recognising in these “pitiless heathen,” as they were called, “the Gog and Magog who were to precede the approaching end of the world.” Modern historians, however, have attributed to it various other origins, the most recent affirming that the word signifies “confederate.” But whatever may be its derivation, Max Müller, by the unerring guide of language, has traced the original seat of this interesting people to the Ural mountains which stretch upwards to the Arctic ocean; and pointing out the close affinity the Magyar tongue bears to the idiom of the Finnish race spoken east of the Volga, declares that the Magyars form the fourth branch of the Finnish stock, viz. the Ugric; and in his ‘Science of Language’ he gives striking examples of the similarity and connection which exist in the grammatical structure of the Magyar and the Ugro-Finnish dialects, particularly in the conjugation of verbs, which have aptly been called the “bones and sinews” of a language; and there is little doubt that the Magyars are none other than the same race that, under a different name, were called in the fourth century “Ugrogs.”

Hungary--the “_beata Ungaria_” of Dante--has been peopled since the beginning of the Christian era, as we have already seen, by three distinct and separate colonies of barbarians, whose birthplace was in the regions of the frozen North. Here, led by Attila, the Huns established themselves between the third and fourth centuries, and hither a century or two later came the Avars, belonging to the same northern race, each destined to accomplish its _rôle_ in the history of nations, to rise to its meridian and then decline, till finally overwhelmed by other warlike barbarians similar to themselves. Lastly--though these have shared a better fate--came the Magyars, the great conquering army with Arpád at its head, in whom the Ugro-Finnish type once more reappeared in all its pristine energy, the same that is believed to have existed in the bands of Attila: a nomad people who, though also composed of savage hordes, became by their daring and warlike propensities the scourge of Aryan Christendom, and were destined not only to become a great empire and take their place amongst the civilised nations of Western Europe, but, by their arms raised against the enemies to its peace, to be in after-ages its surest bulwark of defence against Mahomedan aggression.

A little red steeple, and a sea of mud through which the stranger has to plough his way to the shore of the lake, under the full apprehension that each succeeding step must cause him to disappear in its apparently bottomless depths, introduce us to the village of Sió-Fok, situated on a small river into which the Platten-See falls, and which, by means of canals, is made to drain many of the marshes of the surrounding country; the Sió, which winds away in a southerly direction, being in fact one of those nine streams that are supposed to flow underground and communicate with the Danube.

As soon as we have embarked, the steamer--which, lying amongst tall reeds and willows, was almost hidden till we came alongside her--breaks from her moorings and goes bounding away into the beryl waters of the lake. Skimming over its glassy surface, we pass scores of wild fowl as white as snow, which, not the least disconcerted at our near approach, stand gravely pluming themselves on the low sandy islands just appearing above the water, or watch with the keen eyes of anglers for the fish that the wash of the steamer may chance to lay at their feet.

The Platten-See is at its narrowest here, and the steamer takes us across to Fűred in rather less than an hour, where, after travelling over the nearly desolate plains, we seem to have arrived all at once at the very centre of civilisation.

Fűred itself lies at the foot of a range of volcanic hills, and is much resorted to by the Hungarians on account of its mineral springs. In the summer months the little place is crowded, and it is then difficult, if not altogether impossible, to find accommodation at either of the hotels or boarding-houses unless rooms have previously been secured. Should the traveller have failed to do this, he can have recourse to Arács, a neighbouring village, where “casuals,” “for a consideration,” can generally be “taken in and done for.” The season, however, had as yet not quite set in, so that we entertained no fears concerning our shelter for the night.

Arrived at the opposite shore, we are met by porters who quarrel over us; two lay hold of our portmanteau, one at each end, while a third seizes it affectionately round the centre. They scramble for each article as it is disgorged from the steamer. Walking-sticks, umbrellas, dressing-bag, binoculars, are all alike severally snatched from our grasp. The landlord of the hotel to which we are bound also meets us, and, foreseeing in our persons a long line of prospective tourists, almost embraces us on the spot. Scanning us from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, to ascertain whether there is another mortal thing left to be carried, he at length espies a small sketching-block under my arm, on which a precious unfinished picture is reposing, and lays violent hands upon it. A struggle ensues for its possession, during which, holding on to my treasure as for dear life, I come off panting, but victorious.

Calmness once restored, we proceed in hurried procession to the hotel, where waiters rush out upon us and repeat the ceremony. They help us up the steps, they insist officiously on brushing the dust off our travel-stained garments, they almost pat us on the back in their great joy at the arrival of--what we afterwards found ourselves to be--the first real live tourists of the season. Overwhelmed with this consideration, their feelings do not permit of their leaving us for an instant. They follow us up the stairs, where, as our footsteps echo through the empty passages, they are joined by other domestics, who appear suddenly and mysteriously from unseen and hidden apartments. The landlord, the waiters, the porters, the cook, the chambermaid, the slavey from the shades--who arrives upon the scene, beaming but out of breath, just at the last moment--one and all either precede or follow us into the very precincts of the guest-chamber.

On descending to the _salle à manger_, we find covers laid for four persons at a side table, whilst in the middle stand other tables, round which, closely placed together, are chairs, arranged in readiness for the visitors whose advent is now daily expected; and as we sit awaiting the arrival of our repast, Fancy, in the stillness of the great chamber, conjures up the spirits of its future occupants, and peoples it with cheerful guests, till the walls resound with merriment and laughter. Pretty, piquante Magyar women and girls; Hungarian officers in stiff backs and much-padded uniforms; Hungarian civilians--heavy fathers in ponderous braidings and more ponderous manners; German and Hungarian Jews and Jewesses--all are once more before us just as we saw them gathered in this festive hall three long years ago.

At this juncture of our imaginings, a merry laugh and light steps herald the arrival of two ladies, who, advancing to our table, take seats beside us. The long aquiline nose and protruding upper lip proclaim them at once to belong to the family of Israel.

The external characteristics of this people are not so strongly marked here as in many other countries, but it is nevertheless impossible to mistake them. In Hungary alone they number upwards of 1,100,000, and, like the gipsies, are met with at every turn. The ladies above referred to--mother and daughter, I imagine, from the likeness they bore to each other--were both strikingly handsome. Indeed, whether belonging to Jew or Gentile, it is seldom one sees a plain woman in this happy country. They were from Presburg, they informed us, and had arrived soon after ourselves. Fortunately they could both speak German, or our limited knowledge of the Magyar language would have rendered conversation impossible.

The repast that was at length placed before us was both good and abundant, with the exception of the renowned Fogas (_Perca lucioperca_), a fish for which the lake is justly celebrated, and which--O ye epicures!--was garnished with shavings of raw onions.

Now, I hope we are not delicate to a fault in the matter of food, provided its ingredients be not unclean, and we have more than once partaken--unwittingly, it is true, but not without relish--of a dainty viand afterwards discovered to have been minced snails fried in butter and bread-crumbs, which, if you “make believe” very hard indeed, tastes like scalloped oysters; but boiled fish and onions, cooked or uncooked, I hold to be an outrage on the gastronomic art quite unpardonable in any civilised nation.

The familiar French proverb, however, was never more strikingly exemplified than in this particular instance, for both our fair companions partook of the--to us--unsavoury combination, and were still enjoying their _bonne bouche_ when, leaving them, we strolled out in the evening air.

* * * * *

It is a lovely evening, and the setting sun, a ball of fire, floods all nature in a sea of glory. Away in the marshes, the lakelets are kindled into a harmonious mingling of vermilion and bronze, save where they reflect the pale soft azure of the zenith. Then as the fiery god sinks at last--as he appears to do--into the very bosom of the earth, what transcendent effects of light break like magic over earth and sky! What exquisite gradations of colour! What infinite depths of saffron and rose and violet stretch upwards, till they fade in the liquid purple of the arc above!

Watch now the long lines of rich warm colour as they gradually stretch across the darkling landscape! Here and there some darker object still, a clump of trees or gipsy encampment, stands out black against the paler colouring of the “off-scape.” What is that dark mass yonder? The clear atmosphere, aided by our field-glass, at once declares it to be a party of travellers bivouacking for the night, reminding one of an Eastern caravan.

What a statuesque group they make against the amber sky, and what a subject for an artist! Men standing in their long fur-lined mantles, others crouched on the ground making a fire or unpacking provisions for their evening meal; by their side lie numerous gourds and leathern bottles, just such as Hagar carried in the wilderness: while the rich colouring of their garments mellowed in the dying light, and the long shadows thrown across the golden sward, assist in forming a most picturesque combination.

[Illustration]

In these vast plains _csárdák_ (inns)--a name no doubt derived from _csárdás_, the national dance, which is performed more frequently perhaps in these little places of doubtful resort than anywhere else--are few and far between, but the Hungarians happily are by no means dependent on them for shelter. That wonderful garment the _bunda_, with which every man is provided, renders him invulnerable alike to heat and cold, forming as it does his house, his bed, his protection both from the scorching summer sun and from the intense frosts and bitter, cutting blasts that in winter scour the region of the plains. During the latter season the fur is worn inside, the garment being reversed when the hot weather sets in. “My son, forget not thy bread in winter, nor thy _bunda_ in summer,” is consequently a familiar and appropriate Magyar maxim.

How strange, silent, and at the same time majestic, is the Alfőld at this hour; and how full of sentiment and repose, as twilight gently falling softens its lines and furrows, as slumber does a wrinkled, careworn face, smoothing all in a wondrous breadth of calm!

A cold aguish mist now rising warns us to return. Looking behind us, the sapphire hills loom sombre against the evening sky. The stars peep forth timidly, and reflect themselves in the shadows of the lake. In the window of a villa along the shore a solitary light burns red, a little boat is making for the shore, and the far-off sound of music breaks the stillness with pathetic cadence.

On nearing our hotel we find that it proceeds from a gipsy band, which, according to time-honoured custom, has come to serenade the new arrivals. The instruments consist in the present instance of three violins, a violoncello, double-bass, clarionet, and cymbals, and we hear once more those passionate strains, so full of pathos and beauty, which have lived in our memory ever since we first heard them at Pest four years ago.

The Magyars have a perfect passion for this gipsy music, and there is nothing that appeals so powerfully to their emotions, whether of joy or sorrow. These singular musicians are as a rule well-taught, and can play almost any music, greatly preferring, however, their own compositions. Their music consequently is highly characteristic. It is the language of their lives and strange surroundings; a wild, weird, banshee music; now all joy and sparkle, like sunshine on the plains; now sullen, sad and pathetic by turns, like the wail of a crushed and oppressed people--an echo, it is said, of the minstrelsy of the _hegedősök_ Hungarian bards, but sounding to our ears like the more distant echo of that exceeding bitter cry uttered long centuries ago by their forefathers under Egyptian bondage, and borne over the time-waves of thousands of years, breaking forth in their music of to-day.

Gipsies, like the Jews, muster strongly in Hungary, and number more than 150,000. They are said to have taken refuge in this country from the cruelty of their Mogul oppressors, and to have been suffered by King Sigismond to establish themselves here under the title of “new settlers.”

There are three classes of gipsies in Hungary, or _Farao nepek_, “King Pharaoh’s people,” as they are often called in derision: the musicians; the _sátoros czigánok_, or tented gipsies, by which is meant, those who wander from place to place; and those who, having a settled habitation, are the only blacksmiths in the country. Notwithstanding their vagabond appearance, the gipsies are often anything but poor, and have sometimes been known to amass considerable wealth. Besides being musicians and blacksmiths, they also frequent fairs in the character of horse-dealers, so that the Hungarian gipsy, viewed in his social aspect, is a much more important individual than his English brother, and is in fact, as he has been very aptly designated, the “hanger-on” of the Magyar. No festivity ever takes place without his being summoned to enliven it with his soul-stirring music, whilst in some parts of Hungary it is the custom, or was so until very recently, for a gipsy band to attend a funeral procession to the cemetery.

Wherever one goes, the _czigány_ (gipsy) is sure to be seen. With his long cart, on which, huddled together, sit his wife and ragged children, he travels from village to village, his destination usually being one of the numerous fairs which take place annually in this country; and whether travelling along with his little worldly all, or encamped with his tent under the blue expanse of heaven, he forms one of the most picturesque features of the Alfőld scenery.

[Illustration]

Chapter V.

We Are Met By Our Guide.

In a country where so many nationalities exist it is not easy to travel without some one who can speak at least three or four languages unfamiliar to civilised ears; and as we purposed travelling not only through Central Hungary, but through Transylvania and the Northern Carpathians also, a guide was absolutely necessary, who, in addition to German and Magyar, should be able to speak Wallachian and Slovak.

Besides the letters of introduction given us by the merchant at Paris, we received before leaving England another to a gentleman residing in one of the midland _comitats_ (counties), which before starting we forwarded with a letter from ourselves, asking the favour of his recommending a trustworthy person to accompany us on our journey, and if possible to send him to meet us here.

We were seated at breakfast the morning after our arrival at Fűred when a little group of persons entered, a tall woman of forbidding aspect, leading a child by each hand, followed by a very small man, who, handing us a letter, proved to be one of our Hungarian friend’s own servants, whom he had sent in the capacity of guide, the letter assuring us he was thoroughly experienced in travelling, knowing how to make arrangements at country inns, etc. etc., and, in short, well versed on all subjects concerning what “to eat, drink, and avoid.”

[Illustration]

It was somewhat alarming, however, to witness this little man’s belongings, and we began to wonder whether, amongst other strange things of this strange country, it was the custom for the guide’s family likewise to accompany the traveller. The bundles and small luggage also, which not only the woman but both children carried in their arms, and the travel-stained appearance of their garments, showing they had come from a long distance, were likewise circumstances tending to strengthen our very natural supposition. But our minds were soon set at rest on this matter by András himself, who informed us that his wife had relations in the neighbourhood of Fűred, with whom she purposed remaining with her children until his return.

András was a good-looking man, with a bright and intelligent countenance. He wore white _gatya_ (trousers) fringed at the edge, a braided hussar-jacket thrown across one shoulder, and a small round felt hat and feathers. On our asking him to what nationality he belonged, he drew himself up proudly until he almost stood on tip-toe, and with a look expressive of triumph replied, “_Én Magyar vagyok_” (“I am a Magyar”), and went on to inform us that he was the grandson of an unfortunate noble whose lands had been forfeited, but whose descent could be traced to the _honfoglalás_, as the conquest of the Hungarian fatherland by Árpád in the ninth century is called,--an event regarded by the Magyars in the same light as we ourselves view the Norman Conquest. At this juncture he was overcome by his emotions, but whether awakened by the remembrance of his defunct grandsire, or simply that of his own greatness, it was hard to say.

Our guide’s wife was a head and shoulders taller than her lord and master, and could easily have carried him about like a baby had she been so minded. She was a fierce-looking woman with beetling brows, an appearance by no means lessened by her peculiar style of dress; for, besides her Turkish-looking head-gear, short skirts and top-boots, her sleeves were padded at the shoulders, which, by increasing the width of her already broad chest, imparted to her a mien truly Amazonian.

Whilst András provided for the exigencies of the journey, we occupied ourselves in making short excursions in the neighbourhood. The lake, though fifty miles long, is at no point more than nine broad; whilst at Fűred it is even narrower still, the peninsula of Tihany, which stretches halfway across it, almost severing it in two. Besides the _fogas_, already referred to, it contains several kinds of fish--the fogas, which is found only here and in the Nile, being esteemed by epicures as the very best fresh-water fish in Europe.

The people living round Fűred are principally farmers and graziers. The houses of the former are clean; but those of the _földművelők_, or cultivators of the soil, synonymous with our agricultural labourers, are often little better than hovels, where the children, the goats, the poultry, and the pigs dwell together in happy-family parties. In one of these hovels we saw, suspended for safety to a beam under the roof, a baby lying in a trough in which the pigs had just been feeding; whilst in others we found the common sleeping-place to be a little nook behind the hearth, where the whole family huddled together in contented fellowship.

[Illustration]

One of the quaintest and most amusing things in the neighbourhood of these villages is to watch the kine returning at sunset from the plains whither they have been driven for pasture at break of day. At the sound of a horn, no matter how numerous they may be, each makes for its own village, some with slow and stately gait, others running, but one and all finding their way home unaccompanied to the very bosom of the family.

It is then that these villages, so silent and deserted all the livelong day--during which the inhabitants have been working in distant fields or been otherwise busily occupied--are full of life and animation. The women, sitting at doorways, sew or knit, whilst the men, lounging on the benches beneath the gables, smoke the pipe of peace; meanwhile, in ragged and irregular procession, the kine come flocking in, together with the pigs, each scenting with discriminating nostril its own particular stall or stye, and making for it with glad, unhesitating stride.

Wandering along the lake in the direction of Tihany, we find numerous shells of no known existing species, resembling goat’s hoofs, and by which name they are called by the peasantry. There is a singular tradition concerning the origin of these fossils, to which the imaginative Hungarians cling with characteristic tenacity.

In the remote days of King Béla (1061), when the Tartar hordes pressing from the East menaced the country, the King, followed by his courtiers and the royal flocks and herds, fleeing for safety across the Danube, took refuge in the fastnesses of Tihany. The Tartars, however--so runs tradition--having overtaken him even here, compelled him to retreat still farther. Unable to save his flocks and herds, yet unwilling they should become spoil for the enemy, he caused them to be drowned in the lake, and the fossils found in it to-day are said to be the petrified remains of the hoofs of these animals!

The rocks of Tihany also contain numerous other fossils, imbedded in the limestone; whilst in some portions of the plains, transported from the trachyte or volcanic hills, are deposits containing scoriaceous and earthy matters, in which not only pumice, but fossil and organic remains are found, consisting of opaline wood with impressions of shells and plants of various kinds.

On the last day of our sojourn at Fűred, whilst F. went off to visit the monastery, accompanied by András, I sallied forth with my sketching apparatus for a climb over the hills.

At our feet slumbering calmly, like an infant surrounded by diaphanous curtains in a downy cradle, lay the azure lake enveloped in a transparent veil of mist. Near the shore, the little fishing-boats floating on its surface in the direction of Sió-Fok appeared poised in mid-air, and, looming pale through the mist, looked like birds of morning or phantoms of themselves. To our right the abbey-crowned promontory of Tihany with its hermits’ cells was half hidden by a long stratum of vapour, which seemed to sever it in two; whilst Fűred, with its colonnades and white porticoes, looked like some fairy palace that must soon dissolve into thin air.

Just as I had seated myself comfortably, and was about to make a sketch of the broad landscape beneath, the lake with its fringe of pampas-grass and flights of wild fowl, which frequently rose from the dense cover--for, the mists by this time having fainted away in the sun’s beams, the lake now reflected the deep sapphire of the arc above--I suddenly remembered that I had left my binoculars behind on one of the tables in the hotel restaurant. To go back for them and return in time to finish my picture would be impossible, and I did not like the idea of remaining alone in these wilds by sending András.

Informing him of my dilemma, the good little man declared his willingness to descend the hill at once, but added that if we could only light upon a _czigány_, pilfering _Herrschaft_ as they were in ordinary, he could be safely entrusted with the delicate mission.

“_Spricht man vom Teufel, so sieht man ihn gleich!_” exclaimed he, in the sentiment of our own familiar aphorism concerning angels and their wings, as looking behind him he descried a band of gipsies advancing in the distance.

What a picturesque group they form, wending their way slowly along--three men, two women and half-a-dozen mop-headed children, the smallest of whom, seated on a heap of tent paraphernalia, is carried on the back of a shaggy brown pony, the very type of its owners!

The moment they catch sight of us there is a general run, the women and children with hands outstretched--supplicating in whining, plaintive but importunate tones for kreuzers. A few choice expletives, however, administered by András in their own tongue in a commanding treble, soon send them to the right-about; and the whole party having passed in picturesque file, they begin to pitch their tent on a piece of level ground not far below us.

András soon picks out his particular _czigány_ for the errand, a tall thin man of about forty years of age, with a roguish countenance and legs like spindles, who certainly fails to inspire me with the slightest confidence in the safety of the commission entrusted to him, as nimble of gait he flies down the hillside like a spider descending by his web, and is out of sight in no time.

Meanwhile it is intensely amusing and interesting to watch the pitching of the tent, and its smoky, rich brown canvas forms a picturesque bit of foreground to the beautiful lake in the distance. In the fervour of their occupation they have evidently forgotten our presence, for, hark to the ringing laughter of these free, unwashed, bare-breasted, bronze-faced gipsies, as they utter their half-barbaric language, which defies the wisdom of philologists to interpret and the precise origin of which is unknown!

No sooner is the tent pitched than the conventional tripod is erected, from which an iron pot is suspended. How the wood crackles and the sparks fly upwards as the little naked children, dancing like demons round the fire, throw on sticks to increase the flame! what shouts of laughter resound through the air from these sad melancholy-looking people who have no equivalent for the verb “to dwell,” and in whose vocabulary there are no words to express joy, happiness, or prosperity, although they have many indicative of sorrow, pain, poverty, and woe!

Their mid-day meal of porridge flavoured with garlic is soon cooked and disposed of, but ere this our gipsy messenger has returned with my lost possession in perfect safety, and been cheaply rewarded and made radiantly happy by the bestowal of a florin for his pains. From the look of astonishment that rose to his large, sad, glistening eyes as I put the coin into his hand, he seemed to think himself the richest man in all the country; and as he descended to his people tossing it high in air and catching it again, there was general acclamation and rejoicing.

Presently, waxing bold by degrees, one of the gipsies I had sketched came and stood behind me. He was a delicious specimen of pictorial tatters mellowed by every vicissitude of wear and weather. His brawny chest lay bare to the elements, whilst his broad and slouching felt _sombrero_, dragged into every possible degree of limpness, shading but not concealing his beetling brows, rendered him a fitting study for a Rembrandt. What a rich mingling _he_ too forms of black, brown and amber, and how beautifully he “composes” with the background of azure lake! Holding it towards him, I called his attention to the representation of himself and his surroundings, which appeared to interest him greatly, and with wondering admiration he at once recognised the faithful rendering of a long tear in the sleeve of his outer garment.

Of all the gipsies in Hungary the _Sátoros czigányok_, or those who wander about with tents, are supposed to be the very worst specimens of the race, and are compelled by government to change their place of bivouac every twenty-four hours. After the musicians, the most respectable members of the community are those who take up their permanent abode on the outskirts of villages, and are the recognised blacksmiths and farriers of the country.

Whatever be the origin of this singular people, many of their customs are completely Hindoo, and the similarity of their language to Sanscrit is a well-known fact, their very name “_Czigány_” being taken, it is said, from a Sanscrit word. The Sanscrit name for snake is “_nága_,” “nag” being the one used by our English gipsies. The mouth they call “mui,” which in Sanscrit is “_mukha_.” “Shaster” (Hindoo Bible) is the only term they make use of to denote any kind of book, and “Shulam!” their form of greeting, is evidently taken from the familiar Oriental one “Salaam!” Whilst a horse, which in Hindustani is “_ghoṛā_,” is called by the gipsy “grea,” and so on _ad infinitum_.

At various periods philanthropists have endeavoured to civilise these wandering children of the desert, but without success. Towards the end of the last century, Joseph II., hoping to induce them to relinquish their vagabond lives, dignified them with the name of “New Peasants,” and caused houses to be built for them; but instead of living in them, they used them as stabling for their wretched horses, and either pitched tents or erected hovels for themselves outside. Since then many benevolent and sanguine individuals have done their best to win over the offspring of these Bedouins to a decent mode of life, by taking them from their parents when very young; but so strongly implanted in the gipsy is the love of vagrancy, that no sooner are the little urchins old enough to break through restraint than some fine morning they are certain to be missing--gone back to their own or some other band of wanderers.

No matter whether young or old, the orthodox thorough-going _czigány_ is a creature not to be civilised, and he clings with the greatest tenacity, not only to his nomad, vagabond existence, but to all the ancient superstitions of his race.

He believes the woods and forests are inhabited by gnomes, elves and evil spirits, but he has no God. For him death is annihilation, absolute and complete. He regards death with horror, and after the _pandúr_ (policeman) it is the thing he most dreads. Like his English brother, the Hungarian gipsy pretends to be ignorant of all laws, and, though seldom or never guilty of great offences, he entertains an innate horror of this functionary, regarding him as the obnoxious embodiment of some superior power, the precise nature and essence of which he professes not to understand. But whilst maintaining his universal character for pilfering, the _czigány_ has many redeeming qualities. He is strongly attached to the aged as well as to little children: and during the troublous wars which devastated Hungary in the last century, many instances of self-abnegation are recorded of these poor outcasts, and many romantic legends are possessed by the Magyars concerning them. But however much he may differ in his surroundings, in his consistent habit of humbugging and love of necromancy he is the same as elsewhere; and whether wandering over the great Alfőld or Felfőld of Hungary, or bivouacking as of yore in the green lanes of pastoral England, he is the same mysterious and mischievous waif, getting a living somehow, anyhow, by fair means or foul, as it suits his purpose at the moment.

[Illustration]

Chapter VI.

DéLI-BáB.

The ordinary travelling conveyance of Hungary is the _leiterwagen_ or _szekér_, a long skeleton cart, with sides like ladders, already described, which, from the convenient habit it has of accommodating itself to the manifold vicissitudes of Hungarian travel, and of wriggling and writhing itself into shape under circumstances that would utterly break up any English vehicle, together with the capacity it possesses of being dragged through quagmires that in this country bear the name of roads, is admirably adapted to its purpose.

They know only part of a country who study it merely in its outward aspects and do not acquaint themselves with the lives and characteristics of its inhabitants. Before leaving England, therefore, we determined to throw off our national prejudices and mix with the people as much as possible, becoming Magyars on the plains, Slovaks and Rusniaks in the northern and north-eastern Carpathians, Wallachs in Transylvania and Yougo-Slávs in Croatia. For this reason too we determined not to keep to the iron-roads, but to travel across country by _szekér_--curiously enough pronounced _shaker_--or any other conveyance to be met with. The _szekér_ is by no means so uncomfortable a vehicle as might be imagined, for well filled with hay in addition to a couple of air-pillows--which no traveller in Hungary should omit to carry--one may journey in it day after day without very much fatigue.

Starting from so small a place as Fűred--where thus early in the season we feared nothing else could be obtained--our expectations at any rate did not soar beyond that humble means of locomotion even if our ambition took a loftier flight. But our guide, on the contrary, threw, figuratively speaking, cold water upon that modest vehicle--in fact, very cold water indeed--venturing to insinuate at the anomaly that would be presented by an august _Ángol_, and his _tekintetes asszony_ (worshipful lady), as he persisted in styling us, travelling in so undignified a manner, and did his utmost to dissuade us from proceeding across-country by inducing us to return to Sió-Fok, and there take the train to Pest, at which place we could purchase a travelling carriage if we would, and journey through Hungary in a manner becoming an “illustrious family” from _Ángolország_ (England).

Talleyrand says somewhere in his philosophy that “the tongue was given to conceal the thoughts,” and András’s opposition to our travelling in a “shaker” bore, we felt sure, no reference to the maintenance of _our_ dignity, but simply to that of his own. The Hungarians are proverbially proud, ostentatious and fond of display, and there never was a truer proverb than that of their own creation: “_Sallangos a Magyar_” (the Magyars are fond of trappings). This being the case, the prospect of sitting side by side with the driver on the bench of a _paraszt-kosci_, or peasant’s carriage, as a _szekér_ is often designated--it was amusing to hear the scornful way in which he pronounced the word--was far more than so pompous an individual as a Magyar guide could view with complacency. It was to him therefore a source of no small chagrin that we intimated our intention of persisting in our contemplated cross-country journey to Pest.

András in his ordinary attire, and András dressed in the livery of his master, were two entirely different personages. We could scarcely recognise him when he presented himself on the morning of the day on which we were to start, arrayed in the tightest of pantaloons of dark green cloth, braided with yellow, and hussar-jacket of the same. The livery was somewhat faded, it is true, but he presented, notwithstanding, quite a martial appearance; his moustache by the agency of some external application stood out perfectly straight, and, extending far beyond the region of his face, added a fierce and Mephistophelean character to his countenance.

To the eyes of the English traveller the costumes or rather liveries of the servants of the “nobles” and gentry are very striking. There was a time however, and not so long ago, when they wore a full military uniform, resplendent with gold and silver lace, each gentleman having his valet, who was dressed and armed like a hussar, and who waited on him with the soldier-like accompaniments of sabre and spurs. The other men-servants of his establishment were similarly equipped; whilst the ordinary costume of their masters consisted of gay-coloured broad-cloth richly embroidered with gold, a velvet fur-lined mantle thrown over one shoulder, a girdle or sash of some costly material encircling the waist, and a hat adorned with splendid plumes.

These beautiful “relics of barbarism” are, alas! fast dying out. The ladies have relinquished their national costumes for those of Western Europe, and the nobles only wear theirs on festive and grand occasions, unless they desire to make, as in 1870, a political demonstration against some Imperial laws, when to a man the Hungarians present themselves in all their former glory of plume, embroidered sash, and kingly mantle, and cause the streets of Pest to look like scenes from an opera.

We were just starting for an early cruise on the lake, when András overtook us bristling with importance, his very hair standing erect in his eagerness to communicate something. He had that moment, so he informed us, by a piece of unprecedented good luck, heard of a britzska belonging to a dead Pole from Gallicia; that is to say, trying to correct himself, it had _once_ belonged to a dead Pole. Here, getting hopelessly entangled in speech, and unable to right himself, he came to a standstill, till growing calm by degrees he at length explained that a Polish gentleman, who had sought health in the healing waters of Fűred, had not only failed to find it, but had committed the misdemeanour of dying in a certain inn in the neighbourhood before he had paid the bill. The britzska consequently became the property of the landlord, and was for sale.

Although the sum demanded was four hundred gulden, he, András, believed that by judicious bargaining it might be obtained for three hundred. At any rate would “their Graces” only come and see it? It was in an _álás_, or shed, in the village hard by.

Following him, we soon came to the place where it was reposing,--a heavy, time-worn, battered, and oppressed-looking thing, typical, doubtless, of the fortunes of its late owner, whilst so ancient was its general appearance that it might have conveyed Arpád or even Attila himself across the Carpathians when they and their conquering armies made their first entry into Hungary. It possessed, however, the modern luxury of a hood and glass shutters, and was constructed so as to enable the traveller to lie down in it at full length, and we were forced to admit that the whole did unquestionably form a very snug arrangement for journeying through a country like this, where there are such violent and rapid changes in the temperature.

The paper currency of Hungary was at this time more than usually depressed. We obtained everywhere twelve florins and about eighty kreuzers in exchange for our English sovereign, so that three hundred gulden--a gulden being equivalent to two shillings--represented in reality only £25 10_s._; we therefore informed him that if he could strike the bargain for that sum he might, and left him to do the haggling.

We were doubtless not a little influenced in our compliance with András’s wishes by a conversation we had had that morning with a German, whom we happened to meet whilst walking on the shores of the lake.

“Brigandage in Hungary,” he remarked, “is not yet a thing of the past. You will be journeying across the lonely Alfőld, and doing so in a manner befitting a person of distinction is, believe me, the only thing that will exempt you from an attack, should chance lead you in their way. You English have a proverb, ‘There is honour amongst thieves;’ and it is one that might well have emanated from this country, for the innate pride of these Magyar ruffians causes them to regard with such respect and veneration all whom they conceive to be of pure blood, that instead of robbing them they will often afford them safe conduct through their fastnesses; and whilst a caravan of merchants crossing the Alfőld in broad day may fall a victim to their avarice, the haughty noble driving in his carriage, attended by one solitary servant, may travel in perfect safety throughout the livelong night. If you travel in your own carriage, you may be mistaken for one of these nobles; and rather than rob you, they will probably help you on your journey.”

It is scarcely necessary to say that András succeeded in his negotiations, and in little more than an hour’s time--instead of the much-despised _paraszt-kosci_--our _britzska_, to which were harnessed four miserable-looking horses, quite in keeping with the equipage itself, drew up to the hotel.

Our charioteer, a man of sinister appearance with deep-set eyes and raven hair, is smoking a pipe. He wears the usual hussar-jacket thrown rakishly over one shoulder and a bunch of flowers in his hat. Giving half-a-dozen flourishes with his whip, he tickles the ears of the leaders. The last bag has been deposited. The hamper containing the cold fowls, the yard of bread, the half yard of garlicky sausage and the bottles of _badacsony_, reposes safely in a net beneath the carriage. We take our places: a struggle ensues on the part of the four lean, long-tailed horses at starting, all of which manifest a decided will of their own--but suddenly we are off.

Between Fűred and the mountains of Transylvania stretches an uninterrupted plain. The country in this locality, however, is less thinly populated than that of the Pettaurfeld, which we passed through on entering Hungary from Venice. On the road we meet waggons containing barrels and piles of merchandise drawn by beautiful white, meek-eyed oxen, and often driven by Jews, who all over Hungary are the “middlemen” between the producer and the consumer. It is to the Jews that the farmer sells the wool from his numerous flocks, and the “noble” the produce of his estates. They are Jews who buy the grapes and the wheat and the maize, and who drive hard bargains with the lowly peasant for his little plot of sunflowers, poppies or hemp, and who are the medium of nearly all the commerce in the country.

[Illustration]

Our route now leads us in a northerly direction. At first the plains softly undulating are dimpled here and there with shady hollows; whilst like golden islands in an ocean of vivid green lie long stretches of yellow colza and ripening corn. On the gently rising upland yonder a dark round speck appears against the sunlit sky; gradually it elongates, and we hear a voice singing in a quivering treble some national idyll. It is a husbandman emerging from the hollow and trudging homewards along the crest of the undulation. Then all is silence and solitude once more, till coming to a standstill at one of the primitive wells by the roadside, we hear the distant rumble of a waggon as its wheels grind heavily along, the driver of it singing, as he goes, a melancholy ditty in the minor key. Then one by one the villages and solitary farms lying on the horizon die away; and we enter the boundless plains. How lonely we feel, and what tiny atoms of creation, with no objects to measure ourselves by save birds of prey and the white clouds sailing far up in the great, blue, glorious sky!

Our carriage, though imposing only in the matter of size, proved very comfortable, its ponderous hood shielding us from the heat of the sun, save where, taking mean advantage of weak places in its constitution, it shot fiery arrows in upon us, scarcely less piercing than those that pour down upon the head of the traveller in the desert.

The sun reflects itself in the white and dusty road. Above the soil on either side there is a flickering motion of the air like the haze from a lime-kiln. Everything is hot and dusty; not an insect is seen hovering about the low bushes which now and then skirt our pathway. All nature is taking its siesta in the dreamy noontide, and nothing is awake but the scarlet pimpernel that with wide-open unblinking eye looks straight up at the blazing sun. We now come to a marshy district, where a lonely heron is contemplating its lovely image in a small still pool, and then away we go again out into broad purple patches of newly upturned soil, bands of emerald corn, and speckled streaks of tobacco, with its large red and green leaves, and on through cool labyrinths of maize, till we come to vast tracts of uncultivated land, where wild horses with flying manes go scampering across its surface with all the natural grace of untamed things.

As day advances and the shadows of the clouds begin to lengthen across the plains, a breeze springs up and plays about us softly, rustling the large white, surplice-like sleeves of the driver’s garment, but not sufficiently strong to stir his black and flowing locks, which, weighted with some unctuous matter, rest calmly on his shoulders. Our nearest town is Veszprim, but at the pace we are at present going we are scarcely likely to reach it before nightfall, if then. But what does it matter, when we have the whole of to-morrow, and the next day, and the day after that, aye, and our whole lives, to do the distance in if necessary? How delightful to enjoy for once the true feeling of rest in this world of hurry-scurry, where we are but too often compelled to live at high pressure! Let, oh! let us for once take life easily under the broad and peaceful canopy of heaven, and reduce the _dolce far niente_ to a science!

Borne leisurely onwards by the monotonous jog-trot of our steeds, the scream of a falcon now and then, as it whirls overhead, is the only sound that breaks the stillness. Nothing is here to remind us of that busy world which seems somewhere quite outside the atmosphere of our present lives, and which, so far as we are immediately concerned, might belong to some wholly different planet, even if it exists at all. Mother Earth here folds us in an entirely different lap; all the symbols of our old lives have vanished, and the present is far too vague and dreamy to be linked with any real memories. And as we recline languidly and luxuriously in the warm shade of our comfortable carriage, our past experiences are for the time buried in the Lethean stream; whilst the things of men--the tragedies of life and death, the deeds of cruelty and wrong, the hunger and struggle with hard times which exist in that world that lies beyond the circle of our visible horizon--seem no longer real, but only a hideous fancy.

Presently we espy what in the distance appears to be a river.

“Is it old Father Danube turning up unexpectedly?” we ask each other; exclaiming, after a pause, “No, it cannot be a river, it is a broad lake with a green island in its midst. See how the trees are reflected in the water!”

“What is the name of that lake yonder?” we inquire of András, who is half asleep on the box. “It surely cannot be the Platten-See again; it is the wrong side of us for that, and we must have left all sight of it behind us hours ago.”

“_Déli-báb!_” replied András laconically, in a drowsy voice, aroused from his half-somnolent state only to subside into it again.

Amongst the numerous myths which the fertile imagination of those pastoral nomads the ancient Magyars conjured up, dwelling on these vast steppes surrounded by rivers, trees and the ever-recurring phenomena of nature, not one is so poetical or so philosophical in its conception as Déli-báb, the “Fairy of the South,” and the ideal personification of a mirage.

How ingenious and at the same time suggestive is the parentage that is assigned to this national fairy of the Magyars!--“Daughter of old Puszta of the Alfőld”--her home; “Sister of Tenger” the sea--which form she most frequently represents. “Loved by Szél”--the wind, which, fanning the quivering haze--the chief cause of the phenomenon--perpetually changes its aspect.

How often too has she furnished a theme to the Hungarian poets! Have not Eötvös, Vörösmarty, and the impassioned Petőfi, sung of the deceptive beauty of this land sprite when--scarcely less delusive than the Sirens of ancient Greece, who from their rocky island called so sweetly to passing sailors “Come and rest! Come to our cool green caves, O men of many toils and many storms! and we will charm your cares away”--she lures the weary traveller onwards many a mile, and then, mocking, fades away?

It is impossible to travel far on the plains on a sultry day without observing this beautiful apparition. Often it pursues the traveller for many hours together, whilst not unfrequently it is seen to encircle the whole horizon. Now it simulates a steeple and houses poised in mid-air; now a river or a lake; but, generally, a broad expanse of ocean, with long stretches of sandy beach and narrow promontories of marshy shore, near which are masts of vessels, with tall trees and copses and stones reflected clearly in the water.

[Illustration]

We have nothing in prosaic England to compare with the poetical superstition _Déli-báb_; but the resemblance between some of our national fables concerning good and bad fairies and those of Hungary, which are of Finnish origin, is very striking. Not to mention Mermaids and others, which until the middle of the last century were believed to inhabit the waters of the Theiss, there were sorcerers who were invariably accompanied by the conventional black cat; whilst Satan (_őrdőg_), whose particular personification in this case is supposed to be of Tartar or Persian origin, is always represented--though of ante-Christian era--with large ears and a long tail; his abode _Pokol_, where, amidst a band of numerous subjects, he dwells in heat and darkness.

We have passed the episcopal town of Veszprim, with its melancholy houses and grass-grown streets, passed its numerous vineyards, and once more, out on the broad and silent plains, see at long intervals little sleepy farms lying half-hidden amongst the green recesses of Indian corn, and surrounded by a blaze of wild flowers.

At still longer distances we come to small villages, almost every one of which is called _Kis_ or _Nagy_--_something_; adjectives signifying “little” and “great,” and which, when reversed, apply to villages far beyond our sight.

All, whether _Kis_ and _Nagy_, are exceedingly alike. Each house has a white gable pierced with its one small window; beneath which, on a bench placed against the wall precisely in the same position as that of its next door neighbour, sit peaceful women and girls knitting and gossiping. These benches, with one of which each house is provided, are called by the appropriate appellation of _Szóhordók_, “word-bearers.”

This uniformity in the villages of the Alfőld is very striking and peculiar, and cannot fail to arrest the attention of all who, leaving the iron-roads which now link all the large towns and cities of Hungary together, travel across the open country.

Chapter VII.

The áGáS Or Hungarian Well.

The aspect of the Alfőld varies considerably according to the nature of the soil. In some places it is boggy; in others sandy and incapable of cultivation; in others again it is so marvellously fertile that it produces crops which by an English agriculturist would be deemed absolutely fabulous. In such areas shafts have been sunk five hundred feet for the purpose of ascertaining the depth of the soil, but even then without the bottom having been reached. In this rich alluvial deposit wheat, poppies--the latter grown for a kind of confectionery--sunflowers, buckwheat, hemp, flax, maize and tobacco, are all cultivated.

In the cultivation of some parts of the Alfőld the method adopted is to plant or sow in strips of about eighty feet wide and several miles in length; and the stranger, seeing no habitation far or near as he plunges along in his _britzska_ or “shaker,” is led to wonder where the people live for whom the roads are made and who they are who cultivate the soil, or whether benevolent earth spirits do not rise during the night to till the land, sow the seed, and hoe and weed those endless lines of golden maize and undulating corn.

The soil being so fertile, the harvests, as I have said, are wonderfully abundant, and this, too, in spite of the drawbacks to which the crops are subject, arising from droughts on the one hand, and inundations on the other. The former are attributed in a great measure to the absence of trees, one of the first peculiarities that strike the traveller on entering the Alfőld.

To remedy this evil to some extent, namely, the dryness of the soil, trees are being planted in great numbers in many districts of the plains, whilst in others attempts are being made to irrigate the land by means of canals.

The inundations, however, are a difficulty that can never be overcome. Year by year a war offensive and defensive is waged by the waters of the Danube, and its tributaries the Marős and the Theiss, with the unfortunate inhabitants of the towns and villages situated on their shores. As the beds of these rivers rise, the dykes are raised also; but when there happens to be a sudden thaw in the higher Carpathians, no artificial barrier is strong enough to resist the great pressure brought to bear upon them, and the result is the bursting of the dykes, as in the case of Szegedin, and the inundation of the surrounding country.

There is also another phenomenon prejudicial to the interest of agriculturists. The rivers flow subterraneously. In dry seasons they drain the soil by drawing down its moisture to themselves; while in rainy seasons the water of the overfull rivers, welling up through the light alluvial soil, converts the plains into a gigantic swamp. Nor is this all. The Danube is perpetually changing its course; in some instances it has left towns and villages many miles distant which were once situated on its banks; whilst it now flows close to others at one time far away.

Geologists declare that at some pre-historic period the plains formed three inland seas, and it is quite impossible to travel in the vicinity of this greatest of all European rivers and its tributaries, without feeling that in Time’s great cycle the waters must once more submerge the whole district of the Alfőld.

In spite of all these disadvantages, the Magyars love their plains just as the Swiss do their mountains, and see in them the embodiment of all natural beauty.

Across these steppes the roads, which are often little better than a waggon track overgrown with grass, are occasionally given to being vague. Proceeding on our way we reach a point where two such roads meet. The driver is evidently puzzled which to take. That to the left appears to vanish in a corn-field, and the one to the right to lead to a farm lying half-hidden in low brushwood. Pausing to consider our bearings, we soon descried creeping lazily along the former, another long waggon, the only kind of vehicle we have passed since leaving Fűred.

“Ho! Hi! _Soger_!” cries our driver--“which is the way to Stuhlweissenburg?”

The word _Soger_, which in that sense meant German, was an unfortunate epithet, most insulting to a Magyar.

“_Brother!_” was the reply, uttered in a savage tone of voice and accompanied by what sounded like an oath, the waggoner at the same time giving a sharp tug to the reins that brought the waggon right across our path and landed his team in a bog at the side. Then, standing upright on the seat, he traced with his finger slowly and majestically the whole circle of the horizon and exclaimed, “_There!_”

The Hungarians entertain a deep-rooted dislike to Germans individually as well as to everything German; and to pretend to mistake a Magyar for one of the hated race is a favourite and very effective mode of insult.

After a delay of half an hour, during which the oxen are being extricated from the bog, and the waggon dragged into position again, we journey on once more and come to villages, the one-storied houses of which are so uniformly built that, with their white gables facing the same direction, they look from a distance precisely like tents. In fact, wherever the observant traveller goes in Hungary, he is struck with two peculiarities: one consisting in the relics of Orientalism possessed by the people, as exhibited in their costume, manner of cooking food, and many other domestic habits; the other, in the resemblance their dwellings of to-day bear--in form and arrangement at any rate--to those of their Turanian ancestors. The general features of the Hungarian villages exactly correspond to a military camp; and a stranger who travels merely from Pest to Presburg, or _vice versâ_, will see this statement amply exemplified. The railway skirts the Danube nearly the whole way, and looking across the broad and glassy stream he will here and there observe, as the train bears him along, what appear to be thousands of tents standing in groups at the foot of, or lying on, the slopes of the hills; and should it happen to be his first visit to Hungary, he will be under the full impression that the whole army is camping out, until he suddenly finds, on nearing a village, that what he imagined from a distance to be white tents are after all but cottages.

The Hungarians are in very truth an odd mixture, here exhibiting traits plainly traceable to their Ugro-Finnish forefathers, and there those common to their former subjugators the Turks.

What, for instance, can be more truly Oriental than the _ágás_ or Hungarian well, to another of which, as we continue to jog along the plains, we have just arrived? It consists of a deep shaft sunk in the soil, and enclosed by a low parapet or wall. The water is raised by means of a long cross-beam, fastened to a pole of equal length, to which a rope and bucket are attached; the whole forming the exact counterpart of the wells found on the plains of Hindustan, and doubtless the same as that at which Abraham’s servant met Rebekah and Jacob fell in love with Rachel on the plains of Mamre.

These primitive wells are principally made for the use of shepherds, to enable them to water the flocks which graze on the uncultivated wastes of these vast plains. Unharnessing the horses, Jöszef leads them across to the one we have just reached. Hard by stands the shepherd’s hut, which is made of straw, its shape that of a beehive; whilst the shepherd himself, a tall man with a sheepskin cloak, who in his shaggy garment looks not unlike the sheep he is tending, comes out and, raising the water, holds the cool, dripping bucket to the noses of our thirsty team.

After this we move on again as before, and pass lonely farmsteads, surrounded by wooden palings and sheds for cattle. Near these enclosures, and leaning wearily all on one side, may generally be seen a rusty iron crucifix, throwing its pathetic shadow across the path.

Our Jehu, who has been smoking vigorously almost ever since we started in the morning, now takes his pipe from his mouth, and, placing it for safety in the leg of one of his top-boots, begins to doze. András, sitting beside him, also dozes, the horses doze, we doze, all nature dozes, in the sultry calm of eventide. The tired flocks cease to browse; the tinkling of their bells is heard no longer, and the shepherd--not he whom we passed an hour ago, and who gave our horses water, but another, his double--lies stretched upon his _bunda_ fast asleep, his dog keeping watch beside him.

On, through the same kind of pastures; the same waving corn-fields; the same villages with their twin churches--Roman Catholic and Calvinist--standing peaceably side by side; the same vague roads, which might be sheep-tracks, or anything, or nothing for that matter; the same dust, the same birds taking their evening bath in the white sand, the same sun, the same sky, the same everything. Yes! and I declare the same melancholy iron crucifix, all on one side, just as we left it whole hours ago behind.

“Hullo!” cries F., opening his eyes, and giving Jöszef a sudden shake, that nearly overbalanced and knocked him off his seat on to the road, “we are not going to be deceived this time. This is no _Déli-báb_. We have been going backwards for an hour at least; what is the meaning of it, you rascal?”

But, no: Jöszef, thus aroused--giving the horses an indignant reminder with his whip--observes that it is not Nagy-_Palota_ that we have come to, “and which we left behind us long ago,” but Nagy--_something else_. But by what possible sign he knows a particular village when he sees it and gives it any name whatever is a perfect mystery, for one and all are as absolutely alike to our unpractised eyes, except in minute details, as two pins in a paper.

At length reaching _Nagy_--whatever it may happen to be (it is quite impossible to catch the outlandish names of these small places)--just as the sun had set, and the plains, suffused in soft tints of opal, seemed dreaming of the morrow’s sunrise, we come to a halt, and decide to remain here for the night.

Our entry into the village excited no small interest. At the sound of our horses’ hoofs, every man, woman and child, who did not already happen to be outside, either came to the doorways, followed by their equally inquisitive pigs, or peeped through the windows of their houses, to ascertain what could possibly be coming to disturb the equanimity of their pastoral retreat.

No sooner had we come to a standstill than we were surrounded by an eager crowd, prompted--as we subsequently proved--not so much by idle curiosity, as by a sincere desire to welcome and be of service to us; but no Americans ever manifested more inquisitiveness, or a greater desire for information than did the dwellers of this small village. Who were we? whence had we come? and whither were we going? were questions which András had to answer all in a breath; whilst that ostentatious little Magyar, doubtless thinking he would shine by a reflected glory, was telling them in a “stage whisper,” and by a succession of small falsehoods, that we were very great people indeed--a great English family, compared with whom all their lines of Eszterházys, and Bánffys, and Keménys put together, were as nothing--not even chaff before the wind.

We had scarcely alighted, when some one came hurrying towards us, to whom all gave place, and whom from his general appearance we had no difficulty in recognising as the _curé_. Without interrogating us, as his parishioners had done, he begged we would at once accompany him to his house, and make it our home as long as it suited us to avail ourselves of so humble a shelter--a suggestion echoed by the whole admiring crowd.

As the Hungarians are known to excel every other nation in the virtues of hospitality, this invitation gave us no surprise. Our _ci-devant_ host, however, was a priest, and as such may have been influenced by the apostolic admonition regarding the entertainment of “strangers.” Be this as it may, we were not destined to avail ourselves of his hospitality; for our guide--who had left us a few minutes previously to spy out the land and its capabilities--came hurrying back at this juncture with the intelligence that a tolerable inn existed in the village, containing decent accommodation for man and beast: whereupon, thanking the priest for his kindness, we proceeded thither at once.

The _fogado_ in question was a straggling building of which the kitchen formed the principal room, where men--waggoners, apparently, whose horses or teams of oxen we had seen reposing in the _álás_ close by--were drinking _slivovitz_.

In common with the generality of roadside inns in Hungary, there was an odour of garlic pervading the apartments.

Garlic! Why should we turn up our insular noses at the classic bulb? Did not Socrates himself advocate its use in the Banquet of Xenophon, and the children of Israel hanker after it in spite of their manna?

To the right of the kitchen, furnished in the most primitive fashion, was the guest-room, whose small windows, placed high in the wall, made it seem like a prison. The hostess was a Jewess, but the house was scrupulously clean, as are nearly all on the Alfőld.

In a corner of the room apart from the rest sat two men in the costume of the peasantry, who, taking off their hats, rose at our entrance.

“They are nobles,” whispered the hostess as she led us to an inner room--“_bocskorosok nemesemberk_ (Lords of the Sandal), as they are sometimes called in ridicule, because half of them have not wherewithal to buy _csizmák_” (top-boots).

These aristocratic rustics, nicknamed “_bocskorosok nemesemberk_,” are in reality peasants, who have fought on the battle-field, or otherwise served their country, and have received letters-patent of “nobility”--a title, however, that merely gives them certain legal privileges.

The _fogado_ covered a considerable area. Where land is so abundant there is no need to economise space. Every room was on one floor, and arranged round a large courtyard, which was bordered with evergreens and flowering shrubs, growing in brightly-painted tubs. Beyond was a cluster of cowsheds, and beyond these again a clump of trees, beneath which a party of gipsies were bivouacking.

Out in the plains, in the direction of the west and opposite the gipsies’ camp, a number of cattle were browsing peacefully; a man on horseback was driving home a flock of sheep, the outline of his form rendered vague and undefined by the crimson haze which flooded all nature; the trees stood out against the brilliant sky, now bathed in the afterglow, all golden towards their summits, and purple as they neared the ground; the smoke from the gipsies’ fire curled upwards in graceful wreaths; warm shadows lay across the greensward; a woman flitted to and fro with milk-pails, her dress a rich mingling of red, brown, and orange, and her head covered with a blue kerchief--the whole forming a beautiful picture of sympathetic colour and repose.

These roadside inns are far less frequented now than they were, when the ordinary country roads formed the only communication between one town and another. The opening of railways must be an incalculable boon to the inhabitants of both Alfőld and Felfőld alike, for, until they existed, no towns in a state of siege could have been more cut off from the outer world than were those of Hungary in winter, when the roads become absolutely impassable, even for a light vehicle. The inhabitants were consequently obliged either to purchase everything they needed from a distance before the winter began, or to wait till the spring came to release them from their durance.

Even yet, towns and villages connected by railways are few and far between; and very dreary, one would think, must be the people’s lives in places where none exist, when the earth has once lain down in the sepulchre of winter, and the frost has set its iron grip upon the broad expanse of plains. Locked in completely during this season from all communication with their fellows, how do they manage to live? They are, however, a contented, happy people, and their home joys greater far, it is said, than those of dwellers in towns and cities. Let us hope they are.

In the long winter evenings, seated round their large high stoves, they read the passionate and patriotic utterances of their national writers, improvise rhymes to the _csárdás_, or compose those sad and plaintive melodies for the _telinka_ which one hears in the open air in summer-time. It has been well said that external nature is the outer body of national life, and these dwellers of the great Alfőld, with its impressive breadth and silence, possess contemplative and poetic minds, as nearly all do who are continually surrounded by nature’s solitudes. Even in their most joyous moments there is, indeed, a tinge of melancholy always perceptible in the temperament of the Magyars.

The bad condition of the roads, at all events those of the Alfőld, is of course mainly due to the absence of stone, and the enormous expense which bringing the necessary materials from a distance naturally involves. We were told by a gentleman with whom we once travelled from Pest to Nagy-Várad, that one of the roads across the plains had cost the Government no less than what represented in English money £20,000 per _mile_; and when the vast area of the plains is taken into consideration, one no longer marvels at the quagmires that carriages have to drag through whilst travelling from town to town and village to village.

Nor is the absence of stone the only disadvantage the dwellers of these steppes have to contend with, for wood is almost as scarce, and in some remote districts the villages, from these combined causes, consist of a mere cluster of mud cottages, thatched with the dried stalks of Indian corn; whilst the farmers, unable to procure material with which to build granaries, are obliged to bury their corn in holes in the ground, which are lined with straw for the purpose.

As evening wears on, and the plains are swallowed up in shadow, fires blaze up here and there in the vast expanse, indicating in unexpected places the presence of gipsies or travellers bivouacking for the night. During harvest-time, in the month of August, they are to be seen in every direction. The nights being chilly, notwithstanding the heat of the day, the reapers, in the absence of wood, make their fires of wheat-sheaves--a thing thought nothing of in this region of cereal abundance--and sit round them in merry groups as they eat their evening meal.

Whilst the corn is being cut and gathered in, the peasants do not return to their homes, the distance, in most cases, being too great. They consequently sleep out of doors for many weeks together, until the harvest season is over. In some parts of Hungary the reaping of the grain is accomplished by moonlight, and the scene is very picturesque. The ruddy glow of the fires lights up the bronzed faces of the reapers, as they fell the long straight stalks of the Indian corn heavy with their weight of golden grain, or plunge their sickles into the softer and more supple labyrinths of wheat and rye, and forms pictures that, once seen, it is impossible to forget.

After the labourers have partaken of their simple meal, which generally consists of black bread and bacon, a period of rest ensues, when they crouch or lie at full length round their fires, listening to songs improvised by one of their party. He adapts rhymes of his own composition to some popular melody, accompanied by a companion on the _telinka_, a kind of Arcadian pipe; for the Hungarian peasant, like the shepherd, is in a small way not only a musician, but a poet. Occasionally they get up a dance; and should the _czigány_-folk be wanting, besides the _telinka_ some one is sure to have brought his bagpipes with him, and to these strangely antagonistic instruments, the one so plaintive and pastoral, the other so wild and savage, they dance together in the moonlight. All are clad in sheepskin garments, the wool at that time of year being worn outside, and the whole scene reminds one of the days when Pan tended his flocks, and fauns and satyrs danced to the music of his reed. In whatever phase, or under whatever circumstances one meets with the Hungarian peasant or labourer of the Alfőld, he is the same half-savage, noble, kindly creature, possessing an odd mixture of qualities wherein the good predominates. During harvest-time the Slovaks from Upper Hungary migrate to the plains, so that, although the area under cultivation is vast beyond anything we in England are accustomed to, yet the lack of labourers is seldom felt.

As we sit on the _szóhordó_ beneath the gable of our primitive hostel, we listen now to the rude cadence of a peasant’s song as he comes tramping home from work, and anon to the distant rhythmic beat of music proceeding from a cottage farther up the village. Let us follow up its strains; ten to one we shall find our friends the gipsies.

Yes, there they are fiddling for dear life at the far end of the room. In their endeavours to leave as much space as possible to the dancers, just at this moment, in the very height and wild delirium of the _csárdás_, they have seated themselves on the high stove, in which exalted position, concealed, all but their Asiatic faces, by clouds of dust and tobacco smoke, they appear above the white wreaths like dark cherubim sawing away at violins.

A wedding, christening, or some other domestic festival, is evidently being celebrated, for through the wide open doorway we can see into an inner apartment where a long table is spread, its numerous viands decorated with flowers. Half the village would seem to have congregated together, judging from the number of persons crowding the walls of the room where the dancing is taking place. What shouts, stamping of feet, and clashing of spurs is there as the men and their gentler partners whirl and twirl with the velocity of dervishes! How the long ribbons fly and the violet stockings quiver beneath the short red skirts, as the little feet of the Magyar maidens patter swiftly over the earthen floor!

Outside, the frogs holding a deafening concert croak an indignant protest against these proceedings, and an insulted owl hoots from the tower of the church hard by. In the little cemetery the kindly moon keeps watch over the long green mounds upon which the crosses throw their shadows as if to keep them safe. Away, beyond the village, and out in the moonlit plains, the plaintive sound of a solitary sheep bell is heard, as some dissipated member of the woolly flock turning night into day nibbles the dewy grass.

But the nights are always chilly in Hungary, no matter at what season, and as we make for our humble quarters we fold our wraps around us, for there is ague abroad on the air.

[Illustration]

Chapter VIII.

Dawn In The AlfőLD.

Is there anything in all this sinful world so irritating, uncomfortable, and sleep-preventing as a Hungarian bed? Not only is it so short, that, unless the would-be sleeper happens to be far below the average height of ordinary humanity, he will find it impossible to lie at full length in it, but also, from the exasperating nature of the bed-clothes, the process familiarly known as “tucking up” is wholly impracticable.

Regarded, however, from an external point of view, save in the matter of length, nothing could seem more luxurious. Even in these common roadside inns--“_Juden Kneipe_,” as András contemptuously calls them--the linen is of the finest, and the sheets and pillow-cases are embroidered at each end, but, alas! surely by the machinations of some mischievous sprite, the upper sheet is sewn to the counterpane; and as the latter is made the precise size of the bed, with nothing left to hang over the side, the whole thing subsides upon the floor, should the unfortunate occupant move ever so slightly during the night.

Our _logement_ at the various hotels in Hungary is generally described on the bill as _napi lakdij_, and there never was a more appropriate, signification so far as English travellers are concerned, to whom the rest afforded is at best but a series of naps by jerks, and, in consequence of the abominable custom above referred to, a lop-sided conflict with the bed-clothes all night long.

In this “happy Arcadia,” however, even the mild term of _napi_ was inappropriate, for we could get no sleep at all. By an unfortunate coincidence which befalls most things in this country of anomalies, the guest-rooms adjoined the stables, so that every time the horses kicked, they threatened to knock the wall in. Nor was this the only circumstance antagonistic to sleep, for the dragging of manger-chains throughout the livelong night and the hoarse shouts of the drivers making strenuous but ineffectual attempts to keep their animals quiet--they were evidently sharing the same apartment--were no less disagreeable. In the silent village a clock in the belfry tower tolled solemnly the hours which dragged wearily along, as they always do with those who are deprived of blessed sleep.

Before dawn, looking out of my window which commanded the whole of the eastern horizon, I watched the fires of night burn low. A thick pall of cloud, black as Erebus, seemed hanging over the firmament, for neither moon nor star was shining, and nothing was visible but the flickering fires in the distance, and the tall straight beam of an _ágás_ across the village green, just showing like a sable spectre against the sky. No tinkling of bells or lowing of cattle was heard as in the day. All was silent under the drowsy spell of Night.

Then, as soon as night had culminated in the most complete darkness, an indescribable change came over nature, a change which at first seemed scarcely more than mere sensation, a palpable silence as of a world not dead--until this moment--but only asleep. Then eastward the darkness lost its opaqueness and became transparent. Behind night’s dusky curtain a streak of light shone faintly through the veil, and in the hush of dawn, that cold mysterious hour, the curtain with unseen hands was drawn asunder and light became a living thing. The eastern sky began to palpitate, and out of the void form gradually appeared. The traditionary cock crew, and from that moment as if by given signal all animate nature awoke from slumber, and made itself perceptible, first by soft and peaceful murmurings, then by louder bleatings of sheep and goats. Dogs barked, cows lowed,--sounds followed in due course by the milking of those latter mammalia, which little domestic operation we also heard distinctly from our room. See how silently and mysteriously the _ágás_ yonder throws its giant arm about, as the shepherd--whose form is hidden in the distance--begins to draw water for his flocks! And now the sun himself begins to rise from out the bosom of the plains; first sending upwards his _avant-garde_ of crimson cloudlets with gold-embroidered edges. There is a sudden flash of glory, and lo! the fiery monarch comes forth with slow and stately maj