“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.