Great Cumania; and the Jasygians, who settled on the right bank of the Theiss, between this place and the nearer Carpathians; but these tribes were Magyarised centuries ago. The Magyars are not confined to Hungary and Transylvania. In Moldavia the so-called Csango-Magyars inhabit seventy villages, roughly estimated at from 120,000 to 150,000 souls. In Bosnia there are still several villages of Magyars. In the Bukowina about 7000 Magyars; and in Russia, there are various pools of this Asiatic inundation still standing unimbibed since the ninth century.

When the steamer had been again in motion for a considerable time down the Theiss, I saw a fresh town make its appearance below Csongrad, and on pointing to the church spire, asked what it was? and was informed that it was still Csongrad: Csongrad quà-Csongrad là— thought I to myself. This deception being brought about by the successive meanders of the river Theiss, which bring the steamer so frequently back to nearly the same spot, and also, from the very scattered method of building the towns in Hungary, in separate farm houses, as in England, with compact villages for the sale of necessaries; a town is composed of many hundreds of farm yards, with a kitchen garden attached to each, while the ground may be ten or twenty miles off.

This is a bad system, and occasions a most wasteful expenditure of time and horse-power, in going and coming, and in a manner, causes two establishments; for, from time to time, in travelling in Hungary, one sees many isolated houses, which appear at first to be cottages, but are the so-called szallas or out-lying houses, built on the ground which is to be cultivated, in which the family does not reside, but where agricultural implements are kept, and where the cultivator can pass the night during the period of harvest.

SZEGEDIN-THE

CHAPTER V.

FORT-MAGYAROMANIA-THE

LOWER TOWN

-THE UPPER TOWN-STATE OF COMMERCE- THE KOSSUTH
PARTY.

After seventeen hours navigation from Szolnok we arrived at Szegedin, which is anything but an agreeable place after dark, the market-place being twice the size of Lincolns-inn-fields, with a few lights twinkling round its ankle-deep mud; not a room too was to be had in the town, the sudden resumption of the steam traffic on the river caused an unusual influx of passengers, added to those brought by the annual fair, which had just terminated. Szegedin was considered by Kossuth to be the most important point in the interior of Hungary, with 50,000 inhabitants, and an excellent situation at the confluence of the Maros and the Theiss. I took as good a look at it as health would permit, for being unfortunately built on a marsh, the damp, noxious, pestilential air penetrates to the very marrow, so that but for prompt precaution, which confined me for a short time to my room, I was very nearly laid up with a Theiss fever, and the reader may have an idea of the humidity of the place, when I tell him that wild ducks were shot the week before in the middle of the town. The standing pools in the town never dry up, from September to May, so that with fevers and rheumatisms, Szegedin has a very bad climate, except in spring and during the frosts in winter.

Szegedin is nevertheless an interesting place. It has not European civilisation like Presburg or Pesth, nor is it barbarous like the villages of the interior. It is a rough, home-spun, busy, prosperous, money-making place, and, as I should imagine, like a town in the Ohio, a place of mills and boats, grain warehouses and general stores; not an ultimate emporium that stands in contact with the luxurious consumer, but the initial market that takes its tone from the laborious producer. The principal part

of the town is situated on the right bank of the Theiss, and is called Old Szegedin, while New Szegedin is on the other side of the river. The central part of Old Szegedin is called Palanka, from the planks (German, planken) with which it was pallisaded during Turkish wars, and which have now disappeared, nothing remaining but the fortress which commands the passage of the river, as the ramparts rise from its banks. It is distinguished by no defensive art, being an old Turkish fortress built in a square form, with round towers at the corners, and improved by Prince Eugene. It could not stand a regular siege, but could sink any steamer attempting to pass up or down the river, and give the troops of the garrison the benefit of a thick wall in case of a surprise.

The best view of Szegedin is from the elevated bastion of this fortress, the most animated part of the scene being the river, a forest of boat-masts being visible in front. On the opposite side of the river, and connected with the town by a bridge of boats, is New Szegedin, a melancholy spectacle, being almost entirely burnt down in consequence of a terrific explosion of a powder magazine that took place during the war, the long line of white gables and blackened window-holes, skirting the river; while beyond them was again visible to me, after a lapse of several years, the Banat of Temesvar, no longer the peaceful abode of industry and civilisation, but devastated with such wars as have not been experienced since the great struggle of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, which liberated these lands from Turkish yoke.

All round the fort is the civil part of the Palanka, or central town, which is inhabited by the merchants and trades-people, with a great inequality of the architecture. Some of the houses being large, lofty, and modern, in the style of Vienna, and side by side an old Hungarian house of one story, that perhaps stood there when there was a Turkish Pasha in the fortress. Most of the shop-signs in the public place of the Palanka have German names, but the designation of the trade and baptismal name is in

Magyar. During the mania for Magyarisation, none were so keen to identify themselves with the Magyars as the small German shop-keepers. Most of the highest and wealthiest nobility being Magyars, Magyarism was very naturally more or less associated with the idea of aristocracy and supremacy, and while the Croats and Servians, and the great majority of Slovacks, much to their honour, were rather proud of their nationality than ashamed of it, these German tradesmen, anxious to purify themselves from a supposed identity of blood with Schiller, Goethe and Beethoven, and roused to enthusiasm with the greater services Attila and Arpad had rendered to civilisation, were anxious to throw off their own names and adopt Magyar ones. Not one, two, or three, but hundreds of such instances have occurred. For instance a German whose name is, let us say, Johann Hoffman, dubs himself Remeny Janos, because Remen is the Magyar word "to hope," and Janos is the Magyar for "John."

The lower town, or Also-varos, is mostly inhabited by land cultivators; and is composed of long streets with the houses considerably apart, each having a kitchen garden, and being mingled with ponds and marshes, is neither town nor country. A portion of the inhabitants of the lower town are ship-builders and mill-wrights; for here the best and cheapest boats in Hungary are built, as well as the best floating-mills. These floating-mills are a peculiarity of the river, there being no less than three hundred of them on the Theiss; for small water power being scarce from the flatness of the country, the only power sufficient for turning a mill is on the large streams. The boats are for the most part built of oak, and come from the "Tissa Hat," or so-called back of the Theiss, being a part of the Theiss which is between Tokay and the Carpathians. These boats are not only employed on this river, but on the Save and Danube, and are remarkable for their strength and neatness.

The Felso-varos, or upper town, is not much higher than the lower town; the position with reference to the

flow of the Theiss being the only difference, for the one is as boggy as the other. The houses here are not so good as those of the Palanka, but considerably better than those of the lower town. The principal manufacture of the upper town is soap-boiling; there being above twenty of these establishments here, in which common laundrysoap is made, much of which is exported to Pesth and Vienna; the low places in the sandy plains between Ketskemet abounding in soda. Formerly any one could gather this alkali, but since the trade has become extended these places have become private property. These manufactories are carried on in a very primitive but economical manner. The father of the family acts as traveller, attends the fairs of Pesth and Debreczin, and takes his orders in Vienna and the other large towns; while the operations of manufacture are performed by his wife, daughters, and servants, there being no workmen at wages in the establishment.

The upper town is also the residence of the principal boat-owners, and some of them are so extensively engaged in navigation and transport, as to possess fifty or sixty boats, worth each when new, about 4007. Comorn and Szegedin, are, in pacific times, the two towns in Hungary, which are the seats of the river shipping interest, as well for building as for ownership. The principal freights upwards were corn and rape-seed from the Banat, and tallow brought down the Maros from Transylvania; which, along with the soda on the spot, enables the soap manufacture to thrive. The returns from above are the cottons of Bohemia, the cloths of Moravia, and coarse fancy articles from Vienna. Considerable quantities of wood and wine also come from Tokay and the upper Theiss, to the Francis canal, which leads into the Danube, thus saving the considerable détour by the confluence; it was then dragged up to Raab and Wieselburg, which latter town is the great granary of Vienna. But railways have now revolutionized communications in Hungary.