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.
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.
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.