yourself, within four-and-twenty hours afterwards, at the
police-office. The object of these arrangements is, that you may
satisfy the authorities of your solvency, and receive from them a
letter of security for such length of time as you propose, or they be
willing that you should remain in the city. We attended to the
established regulation, of course, and now, having fixed the hour of
our departure, endeavoured to obtain from the Hungarian chancery the
license, without which it would have been impossible to pass the
frontier. It was granted without hesitation, though in terms at once
vague and rigid. I stated my business; that I went merely as a
traveller, curious to become acquainted with the people and the
country, and that not knowing the points which I might be induced to
visit, or the length of time which might be required to visit them, I
was anxious to receive a passport, as generally and loosely worded as
might be. The gentleman to whom I addressed myself was exceedingly
polite; but he did not exactly fall into my views. "There is no
necessity," said he, "to deviate in your instance from the common order
of such things. A passport is required from every traveller at the
frontier; but after you are once in Hungary, you may go where you
please, and stay as long as you feel disposed, without attracting the
slightest notice. I will, therefore, write upon your passport, that you
are permitted to visit Pesth and its vicinity for a month, and to
return." I thought this odd, but could not, of course, object to it,
because I concluded that a person in authority must be a much better
judge of what was necessary than I; and I have now given the detail at
length, because the sequel will show that what was esteemed perfectly
regular in Vienna, had well-nigh told against me in one of the remote
provinces.

There is constant communication, as everybody knows, between Vienna,
and Pesth, and Constantinople, by steamboats which touch, as they
proceed, at almost all the most important places that lie along the
banks of the Danube. Our original intention was to have availed
ourselves of one of these; but we found on inquiry, that the navigation
was intricate, and the channel of the river so low, that hardly any
view was to be obtained from the ship's deck. We determined, therefore,
to proceed by land as far as Presburg, and to regulate our future
movements according to the aspect of things there, and the information
which by i