THE CARPATHIAN PEOPLE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2251, 22 April 1897, Page 50

THE CARPATHIAN PEOPLE.

On the second morning after my arrival we were to start for our respective beats. In the courtyard about 30 native followers were paraded. These peasants showed great variety of tyoe. If the map of the continent is examined it will be seen that, just here, invading hosts from Asia, attracted by the fat plains of Hungary and Poland, must have passed westward, and hosts in retreat eastward. The very name of the place indicates

that it was the pass of the Tartars. Here, then, were Tartars and squat, flat-faced Mongolians, as well as tall, batchet-visaged Magyars. They all wear the same distinctive garment — a sleeveless jacket of skin, with the fur turned inwards, and the outside richly embroidered, together with a leathern belt of portentous solidity and width. Their hair hangs down their shoulders in long matted locks, unless here and there a military bearing and cropped head denote that such a one has lately returned from doing his time as a soldier. Then there are the Jews, distinct in their dress and ia all else. They did not come with us. They never seem to leave the houses, or to work. Yet they must do something, for they absorb whatever is worth having. Yes ! They have one characteristic in common with the rest. They do not wash. Abdullah, a Somali servant fresh from East Africa, was surprised at this. He had never seen a people who did not remove their clothes. He remarked, " These people savages, like the Masai." Yet it was a superficial judgment, for they are a kindly race. I may here mention that the astonishment was mutual. Abdullah, among his other accomplishments, had been taught by his master to ride the bicycle, and went daily for the post. Now these people had never Been a black man or a bicycle. They had a notion that the combination was a new animal which had been fetched from foreign parts, and fled precipitately at the first encounter.

In this country there is no olie between the prince and the peasant. Consequently there is a eubservience of manner that ia almost crushing to a Westerner. It is difficult to know how to behave to a man who bows so low and klsseu your hand with such fervour. Yet their lord knows them all personally, and addresses them like bis children. To each he gives the most precise instructions : "Thou, Ivan, sayest that three stags are cry-

ing in Blazow ; maybe the old twenty-ender that the Graaf caw last year is among them. Thou wilt accompany the Englishman to the Koliba of Bukowinka. Go out in the night and bring him a report of those thou canst hear an hour before daylight. There is little feed there for thy horses. Thou wilt buy two trusses of hay in the valley and take them. At middle week thou wilt bring him to the house at Zielonicza, where I shall be." Such instructions are repeated to eacb, and enforced, until he knows the ropes. As I could not be expected to understand either the Polish or Rathenian language, the German head forester was considerately allotted to me. I could not have wished for a better guide and counsellor. At last the lessons were learnt, the luggage ponies loaded, and we rode together up the valley, along green alps, and past potato patches, witb here and there a scattered farm or small church, which appears to be circular, but iB really in the form of a blunted Greek cross. — An extract from an interesting article entitled " Timber Creeping in the Carpathians" in the February number of the Nineteenth Century.