THE LAND OF THE MAGYAR.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14975, 23 May 1914, Page 3

THE LAND OF THE MAGYAR.

CBt Malcolm Ross. F.R.G.S.)

"We had come from the ends of the carth —I after twenty thousand miles of travel that had commenced at tho Antipodes, and Stefan and Stefy, who •were to bo my companions, after leagues upon leagues of journeyings in many lands. Stefan was a bright, clever, generous young Hungarian, impulsive and lethargic by turns. He was a tremendous patriot, and as ive advanced into the heart of Hungary I saw him quickiy becoming more and nioro the typical Magyar, proud of tho traditions and history of his country, and with an ever-increasing passion for the ethnography of his race. Yet he was not a narrow patriot, for he knew, and ever admitted, the shortcomings, as well as tho virtues, of his people. A Magyar melody or a Hungarian dish would produce a reverie or a reminisenco, or, perchance, both. Gay and sad by turns, in common with others of liis race, lie seemed to have much j in common with those Gaols of Ireland of whom one reads in the "Ballad of the White Horse," that they were Ray I when they he-id the sword; . sad jwben they held the harj>— "For all their wars were merry, And all their songs were sad. Once, in a theatre in an inland town when, after a long day's "travel, much rich food, half a litre of very excellent wine, and a cigar, I was sleeping through the third act of a Magyar drama that I could- not understand, I I got a. dis in the ribs and heard my friend "excitedly snying to mc: "Wake up, man ! Wake up! You aro missing something that is splendil—tho very j soul of tho nation!" And when, after j some Winking of the eyes, L was able, once more, to get the tstago in focus, i I saw a. handsome young officer and a i moro handsome young woman dancing ! to tho stirring music of tho ''Csardas." She was a former lover, and ho had broken tho bounds of discipline and neglected his duty with the guard outside tho castlo walls, in order to meet her again. Faster and faster went tho music, till, in a wild, ecstatic whirl, they were careering round tho ballroom, yet lie, with all the gay abandon of tho moment, was dancing in his sorrow, knowing full well that on the morrow he would bo stripped of his decorations and deprived of his eword. | Others on the 6tago had joinod in tho wild revel, but he, the gayest a.nd maddest of them all,- was the saddest of them all. The audienco looked and listened, tenso in their sympathy aiid their interest'in the scene. And just in front of rae> was a beautiful, dark-hair-ed Hungarian girl following tho rhythmic movement or the danco with a subdued swaying of her whole body, bno, too, iiko my friend, had ielt tno magic of it in hor blood, for tho Magyar woman cannot, any more than the Magyar man, witiwmnu tne t-iiriil or tne wild Gipsy music under such romantic circumstances. And, indeed, it was a truth that even the more phlegmatic Angol, now thoroughly aroused to tho sotting of the scene, the strange music, and the stirring dance, felt his pulses quickening. It was this strange mixture in tho moods of my friend that mado him so interesting m ttieso' journeyings off the beaten track in the land of the Magyar. Ho could Le as refreshing as -i bright spring morning, or as pensive as the gathering gloom; but ho was never in what he called "a j bad mood" for long, and mostly it was the spring sunshine that illumined our ways. Stefy was the wife of Stefan, but I sho was not Hungarian. She was a Viennese, young and good-looking, with ] a play of feature and chnrm of manner euch as are to bo found in so many ■-.veil-bred Austrian women—a blending of mental and physical radiance that is the despair of tho photographer, and which even tho painter cannot transfer to canvas unless he has in him some houeh of the genius of the creator of the "Mona Lissa" —not that in the caso of Stefy there was any suggestion of the smile," but rather a frank and honest joyousness and a delight in all these new surroundings and | adventures-that crowded so quickly about and upon us. You may see the j type, if you watch out in your afternoon stroll at the fashionable hour, in that gay throng of humanity, which, clothed in faultlessly cut dresses and bright uniforms, parades in the Karat- ! nerstrasse and the Graben just_ before' it is time to go to dinner./ No one, surely, not even a husband, could ever say a harsh word to Stefy—Stefy with tho laughing eyes. Stefan could speak . c even languages —-including Hindustani-—and Stefy could make herself understood in live; but as for mc, I could sneak only my ovsn, and that indifferently well. And neither Stefy nor I could speak Hungarian. We knew that Vkcrem" meant jilease, and "nem" no, and "igeu" yes. Wo were also aware of tho very important fact that "koszonom" meant thank you, and remembered on occasion that •'pentzar" was the ticketoffiee. and that if we said "podgnasz kerem" wo should get our luggage! And we could count up to ten, and ask for "mellachris," which means hot water. This'last, perhaps, we remembered best of all, for often the weather was ooid. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, sho is a teacher of languages as well; and I believe that even an Englishman might Jearn Hungarian if ho were shut up in Kolozsvar or IMarmaros Sziget for a sufficiently lengthy period of years! But tho "reader must remember that the linotype cannot nut tho proper accent " on these words, and that they aro not pronounced as they are hore written down. In onecolumn of a Hungarian newspaper I counted no fewer than 158 accents It was perhaps not surprising, therefore, that neither the bright and charming Stefy nor the phlegmatic Angol made no effort to become proficient in the language of the Magyar. But Stefan m;ide amends for all our shortcomings in this respect, and in many a town and village they told him that he spoko a purer Hungarian than they. This matter of languages—fc>tei an talking to the Huivgarians in Hungarian, his wife talking to "him in Engiish and German, and .1 talking to tho two of them in English—caused many a man and woman off tho beaten track of travel to wonder what on earth land of trio we were! I became known as ''The Angol,'' sometimes as "That Angol"—which did not sound quite so respectful—and, generally, it was thought that Stefy was an "Angoles* and my sister, for not even she could speak to her husband in his own lau v guage! Stefan they thought had been engaged to show us'the country, and to act as interpreter! We had many a laugh over this puzzle ourselves as we proceeded on our pilgrimage to places where tho villagers had never eeen an Englishman, and beyond the bounds of travel whore even an American tourist was a rara avis. If you are in Italy the best route to the Land of tho Magyar lies across the waters of the blue Adriatic. But it is with infinite regret that one clambers from the gondola on to tho steamer, and see 3 historical, crumbling, beautiful Venice quickly fading ifom view. The early moriiing £UQ burnishes with gold

a dome above the Grand Canal, and the warm tint is reiieeted, a tone lower, in the rippling water. A gonaober, with short, jeiKy, yet grace.v» at ilis biaae, comes down tho cauai, and ill the_ middle oi' liis cralt axo some milk tins that, also eaten, the gold of eariy morning and reiioct a bngat-like splash oi coiutir —the high ligat of tho picture—in tlio near foreground. Our little hteauier is "alreaviy under way, and ono gazes for tho last time upon ono of tho iinost views of Venice —Venice from tho end of the Grand Canal. Ine Square of St. Marco, the wonderful palace of the Doges, the towering Campanile, tho narrow waterways, the historic bridges, and a hundred other things are now to become memories. Looking ba-ck on the left ono sees tho amber shoals of the jJea-d Lagoon at low water, and, be--yond them, the walled island buryinggrouud of the city. As we steamed out a black trail of smoke from the funnel of the Hegedus was wafted across this islo of the dead; a few gondolas floated gracefully past; and a barge, with a sail of dull white, red, and yellow, on which was painted a badiy-drawn heart pierced with an arrow, floated in on the breeze and driited lazily to her mooriiiffs. For a few fleeting minutes, palace and dome and spire;—and always the Campanile, like a graceful brkle, tall nnd slender, holding herself erect amidst her companions—remained to hold the gazo. tiil at length wo were in tho open sea and Venice soon became a smudge of watery grey on the horizon. I went into a little smokinc hallabove- the companion that joined it with the tiny saloon and, on a soft, leathercushioned settee, sought to make up some arrears ol sleep. At table d'hote there was a babel of tongues —one heard Italian, German, Austrian, French, and Hungarian, but no word of English. There was at our table a priest, young, fat, and bald-headed who asked for "vino" ; a well-favoured French woman of about 35. dark, and with slightly rouged cheeks and lips; with her a, pretty fair-haired, grey-eyed girl; an Austrian couple newly married, ho tall and brown-haired, she tall and iair, with the clear Austrian skin; and a dark, middle-aged Jew and his young wife, who well knew that she had as pretty an ankle as ever artist chiselled. For our "four lira sixty" wo got quite a good luncheon, and when we came on deck again, just before one o'clock, there, right in front ot us semed to be the Australian,,coast, as it might l>o near the eastern end of the Great Australian Bight! But it was really tho coast of lstria. and, astern, on the port side was Rovigno, winch is tho ancient Aropenum or Ilubinum, now famed for its hazel nnts and its wine. And perhaps it was the wine ot this place that the priest and 1 Jiacl taken with our meal, for there was still tho pleasant glow of it in mo, and the wine of Rovigno is the best in all lstria. The stone sarcophagus of St. Euphemia rests in tho cathedral, which from' its hill looks on the adjacent islands and out across tho rippling waters of the blue Adriatic. Uissa, where in the seventh century they mado tho famous purple dies, has lain —for some thirteen centuries nowsunken in tho sea, near the present lighthouse. We como to the JJnonian IsW and enter the waters where, in 1379, tho Gonoeso defeated the Venetian fleet; aud wo can still sco the great quatries otrctchitig across a -whoto island—San Girolama —lrom which were hewn the stones of Venice. Pola lies on tho hillside at the end of its little- bay, and there wo koo the Austrian fleet, dark-coloured ships, drawn up in two lines like greyhounds held in leash. The* Austri.-vns, m making this tho headquarters of their navy, havo taken their cue from Napoleon. • In a little while wo havo rounded the corner of the Istrian Peninsula and are steaming on our northward course for Fiume, the port of Hungary. lstria is now on our left, and on our right is Croatia and the Dalmatian coast, with a great archipelago stretching eouthward as far as Cettinje, in Montenegro. In these seas, early in tho last century > the British Fleet fought the French — 880 English with 150 guns defeating •2500 French and Italians with 284 guns. The French Admiral was slain, and three frigates and one corvette of tho enemy struck their'colours. Lissa, for a time, under our flag, became an ompor.um for British commerce, and the merchants waxed fat in connexion with the emuggliiiig of the goods' of .Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds across tho Dalmatian frontier and through Bosnia into Germany. Ahead of us now lies tho famed Quarnero. across which the Bora comes, occasionally, howling from tho northeast. Many a sailer has gono down before its terrible force, and even the modern steamship has to battle- hard against its fierce gusts. Tho islands, that smilo at us from the blue of the Adriatic as wo pass them by aro famed in legend and in history. There is ono that Pliny mentions—the Island of Veglia. The Illyriau snails, he tells us, were very numerous here. They were considered by the Romans a great delicacy, so much so that Fluvius Hirpinus had preserves of them at his villa, whero they wero kept for tho table. Croatia, - Dalmatia, and Montenegro may. yei> play an important part in the affairs of Europe. Indeed, at any day they may blaze into political prominence, for the Dalmatians and Montenegrins are members of the great Slavonic race which must ever hold an important place- in the affairs of Eastern Europe, especially if Russia, an seems only natural, should one day decide to uphold a great Slavonic Federation. The issue.is ono of great importanco to Hungary and Austria, and may even be of some concern to the British Empire. As we found, in our ■. journeyings through Hungary, Russian' emissaries are not idle either here or in Rumania, and it is quite possible that before many years havo passed the eyes of tho' world's diplomatists may bp looking anxiously towards a storm tcentre that may develop in this region. As we steam up the now unruffled Quarnero, with no more wind than the little Hegedus herself is making, tho mind at times wanders from tho beauty of the scene and , harks back to an almcst foreotten pnst, when Illyrios,' the sou of Cyclops "Polyphemus and Galatea, or Hyllus the son of ttercules —one or the other —conquered tho country and founded the Kingdom of Illyria; or to those days when tho Argonauts came up the Ister from the Euxino Sea .and descended a mythical valley into the Adriatic, near the Istrian Peninsula, which they nanted in memory of their route. Or ono may endeavour to picture the times when Idomeneus and Diomede, those wanderers of Homeric times, cam© after the Trojan wars— brnvo wayfarers *along tho Dalmatian shores. All that was away back in the j shady and mythical pnst. Real history seems to begin with the Liburin, who, after their expulsion from Asia, conquered the country and settled there. They becume a raco of hardy seamen, who, subsequently, played a famous part in the successes of the Roman Navy. In the seventh centnrv before Christ a. Celtic element was intr,oduee4 through the irruption of the Galli Senones, a colony of Sicilian Greeks from Syracuse, which Dionysius settled on tho inland of Isea, which is the same as the modern Lissa, to which, ceuturios afterwards, the men of Manchester sent their goods. Truly time works miracles! There aro many evidences of the establishment of other Greek settlements, both on the islands and on the mainland. Much later —in iJie century before Christ —the llivrinn Kincdom under tho strong sway of Agron, came into collision with the Roman*,, and from that time onwards much blood was spilled in tho ten wars that troubled tho land until nine years after Christ was born. Then cam© Huns, and Bulgarians, and Slavonians, and barbarian crueltie-s and raoine, the chronicle of which would fill many books. But meantime our good ship has made an excellent passage, and having swung round to oi;o of the quays. I &nd myself at Fiume, and land on Hungarian EoiL

And the first thing that strikejs mc, J in this strange country of contradic- j tions, is tti:it the city nnd the people are moro Italian than Hungarian. The porter who got my luggage so adroitly through the Customs house • and conveyed mo to the Grand Hotel j Desk, addressed mc not in the Mag- i yax tongue but in tho softer language of sunny Italy! (To be Continued.)