Consequences of trying to buy a horse-An expedition into Servia-Fine scenery-The peasants of New Moldova-Szechenyi road-Geology of the defile of Kasan-Crossing the Danube-Milanovacz-Drive to Maidenpek-Fearful storm in the mountains-Miserable quarters for the night-Extent of this storm-The disastrous effects of the same storm at Buda-Pest-Great loss of life.

My friend H-- is the very impersonation of sound practical sense. The next morning he coolly broke in upon my raptures over the beauty of the Oravicza ladies by saying, "You want to buy a horse, don't you?"

Of course I did, but my thoughts were elsewhere at the moment, and with some reluctance I took my hat and followed my friend to interview a Wallack who had heard that I was a likely purchaser, and brought an animal to show me. It would not do at all, and we dismissed him.

A little later we went out into the town, and I thought there was a horse-fair; I should think we met a dozen people at least who came up to accost me on the subject of buying a horse. And such a collection of animals!-wild colts from the Pustza that had never been ridden at all, and other ancient specimens from I know not where, which could never be ridden again-old, worn-out roadsters. There were two or three good horses, but they were only fit for harness. I was so bothered every time I put my nose out of doors by applications from persons anxious to part with their property in horse-flesh, that I wished I had kept my intentions locked in my own breast. I was pestered for days about this business. There was an old Jew who came regularly to the house three times a-day to tell me of some other paragon that he had found. When he saw that it was really of no use, he then complained loudly that I had wasted his precious time, that he had given up every other occupation for the sake of finding me a horse. I dismissed this Jew, telling him pretty sharply to go about his own business for once, adding that nothing should induce me to buy a horse in Oravicza.

One day H-- informed me that he was going over to Servia on a matter of business, and if I liked to accompany him, I should see something of the country, and perhaps I might find there a horse to suit me. The Servian horses are said to be a useful breed, strong though small, and very enduring for a long march.

I was very ready for the expedition, so we hired a leiterwagen, which is in fact a long cart with sides like a ladder, peculiarly suitable for rough work. I was much surprised to find the Hungarians far less often in the saddle than I expected; it is true, nobody walks, not even the poorest peasant, but they drive, as a rule.

We started one fine July morning in our machine for Moldova on the Danube. The first place we came to was Szaszka, a mining village. Close by are copper mines and smelting-works belonging to the States Railway Company. I was told that they do not pay as well as formerly, owing to the fact that the ore now being worked is poorer than before; it yields only two per cent. of copper, a very low average. Nothing could well exceed the dirt of Szaszka; we merely stopped long enough to feed the horses, and were glad to get off again.

On leaving this place the road immediately begins to ascend the mountain, and may be described as a sort of pass over a spur of the Carpathians. It was a very beautiful drive, favoured as we were, too, with fine weather. The road on the northern side is even well made, ascending in regular zigzags. After gaining the summit, we left the post-road that we had hitherto traversed, and took our way to the right, descending through a forest. The varied foliage was very lovely, and the shade afforded us most grateful. It was an original notion driving through such a place, for, according to my ideas, there was no road at all; but H--, more accustomed to the country, declared it was not so bad, at least he averred that there were other roads much worse. The jolting we got over the ruts and stones exceeded anything in my previous experience. How the cart kept itself together was a marvel to me, but it accommodated itself by a kind of snakelike movement, not characteristic of wheeled vehicles in general. Except for the honour and glory of driving, I would as lief have walked, and I think have done the journey nearly as soon; but my friend observed, "It was no good giving into bad roads down in this part of the world."

At one of the worst turnings we met several bullock-carts filled with iron pyrites from the copper-smelting. The custom of the drivers of these carts is to stop at the bottom of a steep bit of hill, and then put five or six pairs of oxen to draw up one cart. The process is a slow one, but is better for the oxen. We had great difficulty in passing in safety, for unluckily at the spot we met them the trees were so thick that they literally walled up the road, and on the other side there chanced to be a very uninviting precipice, and of course we had the place of honour.

Soon after this little excitement was over we came upon a fine view of the Danube, with a long stretch of Servian forests beyond. On we jolted, till at length New Moldova was reached: this place has smelting-furnaces, and in the neighbourhood are extensive copper mines. The district is known as the Banat of Temesvar, an extensive area of the most fertile land in Europe; rich black soil, capable of growing any number of crops in succession without dressing. This part of Hungary supplies the finest white flour, so much esteemed by the Vienna bakers, and now sought after by the pastrycooks in England.

There was a fair going on at New Moldova, which afforded me an opportunity of seeing the peasants in their gala dresses. The place is renowned for its pretty Wallack girls, and I certainly can bear witness that I saw not a few handsome faces. But what struck me most was the graceful movements of these damsels: their manner of walking was the very poetry of motion. I daresay it was the more striking to me because I had recently come from England, where fashion condemns the wearers of high-heeled shoes to a rickety waddle! Even here, in these wilds, fashion maintains a despotic rule. I understand black hair is the thing at present, so every Wallack maiden dyes her hair to the regulation colour, though Nature, who never makes a mistake, may have matched her complexion with auburn locks.

The costume is very pretty and peculiar; it consists of a loose chemise, a short skirt of homespun, with a double apron front and back, formed of a very deep thick fringe of various colours. This peculiar garment is called an obreska; I think it has no counterpart in female fashions elsewhere. When the under-garment is white and fresh the effect is very good; but in the case of the very poor, if there are but scanty rags beneath, then, to speak mildly, the fringe is an inefficient covering. But to-day every damsel is in her best; and how jauntily she wears the coloured scarf twisted round her head, which falls in graceful folds! The Wallacks generally have their bare feet covered, not with boots, but with thongs of leather, something in the form of a sandal. The Servian women dress quite differently, wear tight-fitting garments, richly embroidered when their means permit. The men also figure largely in embroidery.

In the evening the peasants had a dance on the open space in front of the czarda, or village inn. Of course we were there to look on. I should observe that we had arranged to stay the night at Moldova, for the afternoon had been taken up in visiting a large manufactory for sulphuric acid in the neighbourhood. The dance which wound up the day's amusements can be easily described. "Many a youth and many a maid" form a wide circle with arms interlaced, they move round and round in a marzurka step to the sound of music. It appeared to me rather slow and monotonous. I do not know whether the figure breaks up, leaving each couple more to their own devices; but we left them still revolving in a circle.

The following morning we were off on our travels again. A short drive took us to Old Moldova, a village within the Military Frontier, regularly constructed, with guardhouse and other Government buildings, facing the Danube. At this point begins the splendid road by the side of the river, made by the Hungarian Government in 1840. It reaches as far as Orsova, taking the left bank of the Danube. It would have been easier to have followed Trajan's lead, and have made the road on the right bank; but there were political reasons for deciding otherwise. The Hungarian Government, as a matter of course, would only construct this great work within their own territory: the other side of the river is Servian. The engineering difficulties in making this road were very great, but they have been everywhere overcome, and the result is a splendid piece of work.

Arriving at the Danube, we took a steamboat that would land us in Milanovacz in Servia. The scenery here is magnificent; we were now in the defile of Kasan. The waters of the mighty river are contracted within a narrow gorge, which in fact cleaves asunder the Carpathian range for a space of more than fifty miles. The limestone rock forms a precipitous wall on either side, rising in some places to an altitude of more than two thousand feet sheer from the water's edge. The scenery of this wonderful pass is very varied; the bare rock with its vertical precipice gives place to a disturbed broken mass of cliff and scaur, flung about in every sort of fantastic form, or towering aloft like the ruined ramparts of some Titan's castle. Over all this a luxuriant vegetation has thrown a veil of exceeding beauty.

The fact of the Danube forcing its way through the Carpathian chain in this remarkable manner is a very interesting problem to the geologists, and deserves more careful investigation at their hands than perhaps it has yet received. They seem pretty well agreed in saying that there must have been a time when the waters were bayed back, and when the vast Hungarian plain was an inland sea or great lake.

Professor Hull, in a recent paper on the subject,[2] states the fact of the plains of Hungary being "overspread by sands, gravels, and a kind of mud called loess, or by alluvial deposits underlaid by fresh-water limestones, which may be considered as having been formed beneath an inland lake, during different periods of repletion or partial exhaustion, dating downwards from the Miocene period."

The Professor goes on to say that "at intervals along the skirts of the Carpathians, and in more central detached situations, volcanoes seem to have been in active operation, vomiting forth masses of trachytic and basaltic lava, which were sometimes mingled with the deposits forming under the waters of the lakes. The connection of these great sheets of water with these active volcanic eruptions in Hungary has been pointed out by the late Dr. Daubeny. The gorge of Kasan, and the ridge about 700 feet above the present surface of the stream, appear to have once barred the passage of the river. At this time the waters must have been pent up several hundred feet above the present surface, and thus have been thrown back on the plains of Hungary. It was only necessary that the barrier should be cut through in order to lay dry these plains by draining the lakes. This was probably effected by the ordinary process of river excavation, and partly by the formation of underground channels scooped out amongst the limestone rocks of the gorge. These two modes of excavation acting together may have hastened the lowering of the channel and the drainage of the plains above considerably; nevertheless the time required for such a work must have been extended, and it would appear that while the great inland lakes were being drained, the volcanic fires were languishing, and ultimately became extinct. Hungary thus presents us with phenomena analogous to those which are to be found in the volcanic district of Central France." It is a significant fact that even at the present day the waters of the Platten See and other lakes and swamps are diminishing, showing that the draining process is still going on.

The extent of the great lake of prehistoric times is forcibly brought before us by the fact that the Alf?ld, or great plain of Hungary, comprises an area of 37,400 square miles! Here is found the Tiefland, or deep land, so wonderfully fertile that the cultivator need only scratch the soil to prepare it for his crop.

As it only took us four hours by steamer to go from Alt Moldova to Milanovacz, we calculated that we might reach Maidenpek, our destination in Servia, the same day by borrowing a few hours from the night, as an Irishman would say. However, it turned out that there was so much bargaining and dawdling about at Milanovacz before we could settle on a conveyance that we did not get away till six o'clock-too late a great deal, considering the rough drive we had before us. Immediately after starting we began to wind our way up the mountain. The views were splendid. The Danube at this part again spreads out, having the appearance of a lake something like the Rhine near Bingen. We looked right over into Transylvania and Roumania from the commanding position afforded by the terraced road up which we slowly toiled.

We had hardly gained the highest point when we remarked that the sky was becoming rapidly overcast by clouds from the west. Our Servian driver swore it would not rain; he knew the signs of the weather, he said, but as he applied the whip and galloped his horses at every available opportunity, it was clear he had an inner consciousness of coming trouble. The road now led through a forest. Here and there a gap in the thick foliage gave us a glimpse of the distant landscape, and of the curious atmospheric effects produced by the coming storm. The clouds rolled up behind us in dense masses, throwing the near mountains into deep shadow, while the plain far beneath was flooded with bright sunshine.

The effect, however, was transitory, for the dark shadow soon engulfed the distant plain, blurring the fair scene even while we looked upon it. The change was something marvellous, so sudden and so complete. Up to this time the air had been still, and very hot; but suddenly a fierce wind came upon us with a hoarse roar-almost like the waves of the sea-up the valley and over the hill-top it came, right down upon us, tearing at the forest-trees. The branches, in all the full foliage of leafy June, swayed to and fro as the wind went roaring and shrieking down the hillside; the next moment the earth shook with the clap of a terrific burst of thunder.

The horses stood still and shuddered in their harness, and it was with difficulty they were made to go on. It was evident the storm was right over us, for now succeeded flash upon flash of forked lightning, with thunder-claps that were instantaneous and unceasing.

At the same time the windows of heaven were opened upon us, or rather the sluices of heaven it seemed to me; for the rain descended in sheets, not streams, of water. Without any adventitious difficulties, the road was as objectionable as a road could be; deep ruts alternated with now a bare bit of rock strewn with treacherous loose stones, and now a sharp curve with an ugly slant towards the precipice.

About half an hour after the storm first broke upon us it had become night, indeed it was so dark that we could hardly see a pace in advance. The repeated flashes of lightning helped us to make out our position from time to time, and we trusted to the horses mainly to get us along in the safe middle course. At moments when the heavens were lit up, I could see the swaying branches of the fir-trees high above us battling with the wind, for we were still in the forest. The sound of many waters around on every side forcibly impressed us with the notion that we must be washed away-a result not by any means improbable, for the road we traversed was little better than a watercourse.

I have experienced storms in Norway, and in the Swiss and Austrian Alps, but I never remember anything to equal this outburst of the elements.

To stop still or to go forward was almost equally difficult, but we struggled on somehow at the rate, I should think, of a mile and a half in the hour. The horses were thoroughly demoralised, as one says of defeated troops, and stumbled recklessly at every obstacle. The driver was a stupid fellow, without an ounce of pluck in his composition, and declared more than once that he would not go on, preferring to stop under such shelter as the trees afforded. We were of another mind, and insisted on his pushing on. One of us walked at the horses' heads, and thus we splashed and blundered on for three mortal hours, wishing all the time that we had slept at Milanovacz. The route became so much worse that I declared we must have missed the track. We were apparently in a deep gully, traversed by a mountain torrent hardly a foot below the level of our road; but the Servian said he knew we were "all right," and that we should come directly to a house where we could get shelter.

He had hardly spoken when H-- descried some lights not very far ahead, and in less than ten minutes we came alongside a good-sized hut, which turned out to be the welcome wine-shop the driver had promised us. Here was a roof anyhow, so we entered, hoping for supper and beds in the wayside inn. All our host could produce was a very good bottle of Servian "black" wine and some coarse bread of the country, so stale that we could hardly break it. This wine, which is almost as black as ink, comes from Negotin, lower down the Danube, and is rather a celebrated vintage I was informed.

It was only in my untravelled mind that the idea of "beds" existed at all. H-- knew better than to expect anything of the kind. All we could do was to examine the place we were in with reference to passing the night. The floor of the room consisted of hard stamped clay, which from the drippings of our garments had become damp and slightly adhesive to the tread. The furniture consisted of a few rough stools and three tables. There was no question of any other apartment, there being only a dark hole in the rear sacred to the family, into which every sense we possessed forbade us to intrude. In peering about with the candles we found that the floor was perfectly alive with insects-such strange forms, awful in their strangeness-interesting, I daresay, to the entomologist, but simply disgusting to one not given to collecting specimens.

If I were dying I could not have laid myself down on that floor, so we dragged the three tables together. They were provokingly uneven, but with the aid of a sheepskin bunda, and our carpet-bags for pillows, we contrived something upon which to rest our tired limbs. I should observe we had partially dried ourselves by a miserable fire fed with wet wood; in fact, everything was wet-our plaids were soaked, and were useless as coverlets.

We had agreed to keep one candle burning, with the further precaution that we should sleep and tie through the night; for it was a cut-throat-looking place, and the countenance of the ordinary Servian is not reassuring. It fell to my lot to have the first watch, and I lay awake staring at the roof, no great height above us. Its dirt-stained rafters were lit up by the candle, and I soon became aware that the mainbody of the insects was performing a strategic movement highly creditable to the attacking party-they dropped down upon us from the beams! I will not pursue the subject farther, but as long as the candle burned I did not sleep a wink. I suppose I must have dozed off towards morning, for H-- roused me from a state of semi-unconsciousness, and "up we got and shook our lugs."

The first thing I saw on pushing open the door was the steaming carcass of a sheep hung just outside, with a pool of blood on the very threshold! In many places in Eastern Europe they have the disgusting habit of slaughtering the animals in the middle of the street.

As soon as we had swallowed a cup of hot coffee, which is always good in this part of the world, we lost no time in clearing out of the wretched hovel where we had passed the night. On every side there were traces of last night's tempest-trees uprooted and lying across the road, walls blown down, and watercourses overflowing. It came to my knowledge later that we got part of the same storm that had fallen with such devastating fury on Buda-Pest just twenty-four hours earlier.[3]

It is a fact worth noting that this storm affected a large area of Europe, travelling north-west to south-east. A friend writing from the neighbourhood of Dresden made mention of a severe storm on the 24th of June; it broke upon Buda on the 26th, reaching us down in Servia on the 27th.

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