IN THE LAND OF THE MAGYAR

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 20131, 20 July 1914, Page 3

IN THE LAND OF THE MAGYAR

By MALCOLM ROSS, F R.G.S. i .

No. VI. From the railway we drove through a great tunnel in the' Castle Hill to Buda, the driver, who was in a talkative mood, lamenting to Stefan thiat the owners for whom he worked had recently put a meter on his cab. This machine, he supposed, was an invention of modern civilisation, but to him it appeared to be an invention of the devil. Anyhow, it did not give a poor maoi like himself a fair chance in life. We agreed, and at the end of the journey, wihen he found our hearts were less metallic than the machine, his pessimistic old) face became wreathed in smiles, and he returned singing on his way. When I landed at the door of my inn I looked up and saw the hanging gardens and the great castle of the King of Hungary looming against a starry sky. And after I had climbed the long stairway to my room and thrown open the double window, there, on the other hand, down :> below m>e, was the mighty Danube, and j from the further shore, the thousand lights of Pest sending quivering ribbons of gold athwart its darkly-flowing wateds. The beckoning lights seemed to call one across the waters from the gloom of the old- town to the throbbing life of the new nineteenth* century city.

A HISTORIC CITY. In many of the great cities of the Old World every rood of ground almost, has been the arena, of some act of turbulent history, and Budla-Pest, though its entry into the ranks of world-famed towns is comparatively of recent date, is no exception to the rule. In the second century after Christ the Romans caime and built upon the right bank of the river the city of Aquinoum, and the Romano here, as elsewhere, built so well thiat you can still see the remains of an a>mphitheatre that must have seated 20.000 people. The crumbling columns of Pagan temples, the ruins of Roman baths and theatres tell a tale of a large and prosperous city. Three hundred and seventy-six years after Christ there began the invasions of the Huns and the Ostrogoths, these two great peoples who were to play such an important part m '■European .'history.. The Avars and the Slavs followed, and it was not till tho end of the tenth century that the Magyars came upon the' scene. There were still troublous times ahead, and! the Tortars, in 1241, destroyed the city. Three yeairs ;later Bela IV proclaimed it » royal free orfcy, and various peoples took up their residence in it. Buda, with its fortress and its castle on the Mil, Goon became of greater importance than Pest on the opposite bank of the river. The days of trouble, however, were not- yet orer, fox, after the terrible slaughter on Mohac's field, the Turks simply marched into and took possession of the city, and for nearly a century and a half, as one historian puts it, the Crescent tanner floated from the walls of t!he Hungarian capital. When the Turks departed Pest was in Tuins. The struggle between the Crescent and th© Cross, and between the Magyar and the Tune and the Austrian make a long but fascinating 6tory.

THE PARLIAMENT. To the north of Pest is the field of Rakos, -whore for four hundred years, from 1000 A.D. the Hungarian duets assembled in the open air. Now the Hungarian Parliament meets in tlnat magnv fioant pil«, fronting the Danube, which was built at «. .cost! of £1,500,000, and which, excepting only Westminster, is the finest building of its kind in the k whole world. Its magnificent dome an<t 'many spires reflect^,in the murky waters .of the -'great Danube are ever a source of delight s io.;-the artistic eye; while the stritejihesis, and the gorgeou*neiTs of its interior/arrangements and '■decorations far surpass anything brie sees in the ParK-aments of the Western 'countries. It house's eio<me 453 legislators, who represent a 'population of 11/,~ 000.000 people, of whom 1,200,000 are electors who vote under a somewhat involved franchise.'' It is one of the few I Parliaments of the world in which there are no Socialists; 'but that is perniaps attributable to the franchise, for, even in Hungary, the • Socialist is now very I much in evidence. In the old days o-J? the kingdom, Buda*, with its fortress ovd palace on the hill overlooking the ri.otfi.fc bank of the Danube, eclipsed Pest; but i it is now rather the historic background jto the bustling, fashionable, and coan- ' mercial city across the river. In after years the two cities were amalgamated.

THE GREAT FLOOD. But the city lias to bear other ills than those of fire and sword. In 1709 a pestilence that wrought greater devastation than tho Turk fell upon the people. Later, the great flood of 1838 swept thousands of men, Avomen, and: ehijdren to their doom, and left the cn'ty once more in ruins. Standing in the garden of the palace on the hill, and looking across the two cities, with the river flowing iv between, across the topi* of tho splendid modern (buildings, to where the great dome of St. Stephan'g looms against the sky-line, one tries to imagine the dread jscene when, an hour or two after the alarm bell sounded, the waters burst their bounds, and a crowd of 60,000 people, who had been watching tiie ineffectual work of the labourers and soldiers, iled before tho overwhelming waters. It was in March, and the (broken ice blocks, borne 'On "the swiftly-rushing -waters, large enough to injure but not to save, must have added to the confusion and destruction. Night had already fallen, and as the torches of the workers were quenched by the oncoming flood the -groans pi strong men and the shrieks of helpless women being swept to their doom could be Heard above the noise of the rushing waters. Children, too, were in* that'great crowd that had assembled to watch the heroic efforts oi the men whoTiad been called to stay the flood. In a little while un-

dermined houses began to fall with a ■ crash, and, together with their occuI pants, were swept from their foundaj tions. Heroes, Known and unknown, did i splendid work in saving life. THE MODERN CITY. j But neither sword nor pestilence, nor ' flood nor fire, could prevent the re-estab-lishment of the city upon the ruins of its darkest days. The magnificeirce and the geographical importance of its site had marked it as a dwelling-place for man, and the boundless vision and optimism of tbe^ Magyar race combined with the practicality and business aptitude of the Hungarian Jews in a comparatively few years resulted |in the building of a new and greater city upon the ruined foundations of the old. The florid Gothic pile of the Parliament Houses looming through the grey mists of morning or standing clear-cut against I the blue of an autumn day; the majestic i facades of St. Stephan's Cathedral,, with its beautiful cupola and its graceful campanile; the university, i wiith its 7000 students; the national museum, with its 1,400,000 volumes and MS; the great palace dominating the old town, but no longer, in the day of the sorelytried lonely old Emperor, a scene of regal splendour; the six miaignificenit bridges spanning the noble iriver; the great solid buildings of commerce; the fashionable boulevard*; the highly artistic monuments, iand the gaily-throng-ed! Corsal all seem to the stranger to be monuments of a national greatness, that,

in the days to come, may expand beyond the drear^i >of p^ssemt-dlay ftnaroQ'iers and diplomatists, or may sink back upon. the dreams of present-day financiers anyone who has met and minigled with the Magyar people the wish must be father to" the first thought. (To be continued.)