onfess I was very glad to have come in for the days of the iron
horse, for it would be difficult to imagine anything more tiresome than
a drive on ordinary wheels across the vast Hungarian plain. It is so
utterly featureless as to be even without landmarks. Except for the
signs of the heavenly bodies, a man might, in a fit of absence, turn
round and fail to realise whether he was going backwards or forwards.
Right or left, it is all the same monotonous dead level, with scarce an
object on which to rest the eye. Here and there a row of acacia-trees
may be seen marking the boundary of an estate, and near by the sure
indication of a well in the form of a lofty pole balanced transversely;
but even this does not help you, for "grove nods at grove," and what you
have just seen on the right-hand side is sure somehow to be repeated on
the left, so you are all at sea again.

Sometimes a mirage deludes the traveller in the Hungarian plain with the
fair presentment of a lake fringed with forest-trees; but the semblance
fades into nothingness, and he finds himself still in an endless waste,
"without a mark, without a bound." Dreary, inexpressibly dreary to all
save those who are born within its limits; for, strange to say, they
love their level plain as well, every bit as well, as the mountaineer
loves his cloud-capped home.

This plain--the Alfoeld, as it is called--comprises an area of 37,400
square miles, composed chiefly of rich black soil underlain by
water-worn gravel--a significant fact for geologists. It is worthy of
remark that the Magyar race is here found in its greatest purity. Here
the followers of Arpad settled themselves to the congenial life of
herdsmen. At the railway stations one generally sees a lot of these
shepherds from the _puszta_, each with his axe-headed staff and
sheepskin cloak, worn the woolly side outwards if the weather is hot.
They can be scented from afar, and their scent, of all bad smells, is
one of the worst. The fact is, the shepherds keep their bodies well
covered with grease to prevent injurious effects from the very sudden
changes of temperature so common in all Hungary. This smearing of the
skin with grease is also a defence against insects, which seems
probable, if insects have noses to be offended.

Nowhere does the intrusion of modern art and its appliances strike one
more curiously by force of contrast than in the wilder parts of Hungary.
Just outside the railway station life and manne