G. E. Mitton

“ On the right lay the rounded hill of the Bisamberg studded with vineyards, cornfields, and woods, among which vain search with glasses was made to discover any signs of hostile batteries. Beyond the Bisamberg could be seen the narrow gorge from which the Danube issues, and further still the rough, rugged recess of the hills above Klosterneuberg, rising steeply up from the water’s edge, with their summits capped with heavy masses of dark green foliage, and their sides sprinkled over with fir trees. A little to the left and at the foot of the hills the city of Vienna lay sparkling in the sun ”

“ Approaching from the west we get the first view of the Tyrol after passing through the Arlberg tunnel,—the fourth largest in Europe. All the valleys are crowned by gleaming peaks, the pastures look vividly green, and the little huts and farms absurdly neat. Through towering mountains 6000 feet or more, over the mighty single arch of the Tresanna bridge we pass to Landeck and the upper valley of the Inn. To the south glisten the glaciers of Wildspitze and Weisskugel, rising above the Oetztal valley before we sweep downward to Innsbruck. ”

“ Some one has compared the Matterhorn to the head and neck of a war-horse rearing up behind the valley of Zermatt; so might the Sasso di Ronch from this point be compared to the head and neck of a giraffe. Standing upon its knife-edge of ridge—all precipice below, all sky above, the horizon one long sweep of jagged peaks—it makes as wild and weird a subject as ever I sat down to sketch before or since. (A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites, Amelia B. Edwards.) ”

“ In great contrast is the town of Pest, which, though in its origin almost as old as Buda, has nothing left to carry back its date. It is in all ways a large and splendid town, with wide streets enlivened by beautiful sculpture, fountains, and trees; it has magnificent buildings, and the streets show splendid vistas, especially where they lead down to the bridges. Everywhere run electric trams, and there are electric railways underground. The principal street is that of Andrassy, a name honoured in Hungary’s political life. Here is the National Opera House, subsidised, as are also the theatres. ”

“ With the junction of the Save on the right bank the Danube forms the southern boundary of Hungary itself, separating it from Servia, whose capital, Belgrade, is just at this corner, which appears a most dangerous situation for a capital. After this the navigation gets more difficult, and many fortified places on the hills which have played a share in the relentless wars against the Turks stand up conspicuously on their isolated promontories. There is endless diversity of scenery, endless variation in the swiftness of the current as the bed of the river widens or contracts. ”

“ To look down into the blackness of a crevasse, to see the roaring torrent filled by the last downfall of rain or by the melting of the pure white peaks far above, is an everyday experience with him, as little noticeable as the passing of wheeled vehicles to a townsman. He has to work hard to gain a scanty living, but the fatness of the plains covered with waving cornfields would seem to him suffocating. The roar of the landslide hurtling down the mountain-side in the night and the crack of a falling tree are sounds that cause him no fear ”

“ Music is part of the life of the Austrian, and the opera house is a national concern, as are also the chief theatres. The names of Austrian composers are legion, for the national genius seems to take this direction more easily than that of literature. Among them is that of Johann Strauss, composer of waltzes, blessed in many countries, many climes; from torrid to Arctic zones his lilting music moves the feet and no less the hearts of those in youth’s spring-time.101 He was born at Vienna in 1804, and is not the only one of his name to win fame with his music. ”

“ In spite of being a constitutional ruler, it is the personality of the Emperor that counts in a way that is felt in no other country. Perhaps it is because he forms the only link among so many nationalities, so many jarring, turbulent, and opposed aspirations, that his person is so strongly revered. Whatever else divides the Magyar from the Austrian and the Slav from the Magyar, here they are all at one. Quiet, reserved, shrewd, and kindly, he has learnt by many bitter experiences to play his hard part to perfection. ”

“ The chief features of the health resorts in the Carpathians are the wonderful mineral waters which gush out abundantly almost everywhere, and the glorious air and grand scenery. The springs and baths alone are enough to make the fortune of any place, but when added to these are endless diversity of walks through forest scenery, wonderful panoramas of wind and rock-scarred precipices, stretching on one behind the other and backed up42 perhaps by a mantle of glittering snow, it is remarkable the world at large has not yet “discovered” this playground fully. ”

“ AUSTRIA-HUNGARY CHAPTER I
THE DUAL MONARCHY No one can rightly enjoy a visit to a country unless he knows something of its history and its heroes; otherwise much that is seen remains meaningless. It is a common saying among oculists that we see with the brain and not with the eye, and the saying is fulfilled when we pass by, as without meaning, this or that magnificent statue embodying in concrete marble or bronze an epoch of vital action in the history of a nation. ”

“ Transylvania is completely hemmed in by the South-Eastern Carpathians, besides being cut up by them, and its people are mountaineers, looking with disdain on the dwellers in the level plain. To them life without heights and hollows, and the constant sense of watchful grandeur given by rising peaks, would be tame and colourless. The mountaineer’s muscles are wrought to india-rubber by continual change of action. ”

“ There is hardly a tree, and the sky-line, unbroken in its tremendous semicircle, sweeps on ever infinitely. It is difficult to give any idea of the Alföld, unless the characteristics of the people who dwell in it are taken into account as throwing light upon it. This great plain, once an inland sea, contained at one time a gigantic marsh of 100,000 acres, and the rivers Theiss (or Tisza) and Danube overflowed their banks occasionally, making it impossible for any one to live near them in safety. ”

“ France again is favoured by nature, though on one side she lies open. But when you come to the middle part of Europe there is nothing to indicate where one country should end and another begin, and the friction over boundaries never dies down; as a fact, it seems pure chance that the matter for the moment remains as it is. It might just as well have been the Austrian Empire which comprised the whole of the middle of Europe as the German one, had not the “luck” of the Austrian Emperor been adverse when the moment was ripe. ”

“ We soon run past Mt. Calvary, the favourite pleasure-ground of the people of the clean, prosperous, modern-looking town of Linz, connected with an iron lattice bridge with the sister city of Urfahr. Linz, however, is not by any means really modern, whatever its looks, as its annals include the fact of its destruction by the Huns! It is the chief town of Upper Austria, and was made a centre of occupation by Napoleon in his octopus-like attempt to draw all Europe beneath his sway. ”

“ The great stillness, the monotony, the evidences of the simple agricultural life of the dwellers in the plain, all contrast with the rush of rapids, the endless change of scene and the suggestions of war and brigandage presented by the stern ruins of the keeps perched defiantly on their high bosses. Nevertheless, in the plain is to be found the true Hungarian life and glimpses of the peasantry. The Hungarian is not a mountain-man like the Transylvanian or Tyrolese. ”

“ The grandeur of the views, and the ruggedness of the objects, in traversing a gorge which penetrates so many miles into the recesses of the mountain, may be imagined. Enormous masses of overhanging rock seem to be suspended above almost by a miracle; old pine forests hang upon the rugged cliffs; the torrent rushing by is spanned by bridges of snow, while huge unmelted avalanches lie in its bed below, cascades tumble from a hundred heights, while peaks, some dark, some snowy, many thousand feet high almost close overhead, and seem to jut into the sky. ”

“ But without arms, money, or support, it was impossible to keep up such an unequal contest, the Tyrolese were inevitably beaten at Worgl, and afterwards the Bavarians occupied Innsbruck. The persistence and tenacity of the mountaineers were never shown to better advantage, for even while the enemy occupied their capital with a force it would have been foolhardy to attack, they posted themselves all round on the heights, and with eye and finger skilled by the chase of the native chamois, picked off every enemy who ventured within range of their unerring rifles. ”

“ The hardy race of men called Wallachs are as different from the Magyars as the Magyars are from the Austrians. Besides the Wallachs and Roumanians, which are the two dominant races, there are also Jews, Armenians, Saxons, and Szeklers, who are descended from early Magyar settlers, and have developed on different lines from their brothers in the plain. The Transylvanians are as restless, and as great a thorn in the side of Hungary as she is in that of Austria, and the complete Magyarisation of the country can never be carried out with these opposing elements behind. ”

“ THE EMPEROR Few monarchs have waded through such deep waters of sorrow as the venerable Emperor of Austria, who was born on August 18, 1830, and succeeded to the throne on the abdication of his uncle, the Emperor Ferdinand, and the renunciation of all rights by his own father. To the good-looking high-spirited lad of eighteen the world probably did not seem difficult to conquer, even though his dual inheritance was torn by inward throes of dissension. ”

“ VIENNA AND THE VIENNESE The exclusiveness of the Court of Vienna has become a byword; so strictly is the right of entry criticised that few indeed of those who pass through the country ever gain a glimpse of the highest circles of all. The nobles of Austria-Hungary rigidly keep within their class limits; they do not meet and mingle with the upper middle class as is the custom in so many countries; there is no overlapping, no exchange of social courtesies; marriages are confined to their own class, and a girl who marries outside it is considered an outcast. ”

“ Here in the sweltering summer heat he works all day uncomplainingly, to gather in the fruits of cultivation; here, when the white mantle of winter lies over the silent icy spaces he wanders in his sheepskin. ”

“ It is the greatest plain in Europe and is at an average height of 350 feet above the sea. Quantities of corn are grown here, but in some places the ground is still too swampy for such cultivation, and the people live by gathering the reeds and rushes with which to make mats, and osiers for baskets.
On the far-reaching Alföld it is the majestic Nothing that awes and impresses you. There are neither trees nor pastures, neither hills nor dales, neither flocks nor people. ”

“ The chief peoples, the Wallachians, Saxons, and Roumanians, different as they are among themselves, are united in common discontent against the attempts of Hungary to impose her own language and ideas on the land they share. They cannot forget that for nearly two centuries, from 1538, they were an independent kingdom under a king of their own choosing, and it was not till 1699 that the influence of Austria as suzerain was allowed.200 The support of the Turks alone rendered this independence possible, it is true, but, however obtained, it gave the people a taste for freedom. ”

“ The walls are fast falling to pieces, the stones and pinnacles that stand are hardly distinguishable from the curiously vertical and narrow lumps of rock which rear themselves at all heights around; the railway has driven a wedge through the very rock in which the building was founded, yet a granite mass is pointed out still as the chamber in which Richard was confined for fifteen weary months! ”

“ Finest of all the defiles through which we go is the Kazan Pass, where the river-bed narrows to129 400 feet, and the towering cliffs rise to a height of 2000 feet, and fall so sheer to the water that without artificial means not even a goat could pass along their base. But no less than two roads can be seen, one on each side; one is clear and well-kept, the other fallen to ruin. The first was that made by the Romans in the time of Trajan, and wonderfully they did their work. ”

“ The Danube Steam Navigation Company, to say nothing of others, runs an excellent series of steamboats, with reasonable fares, for all who care to see something of the fine scenery through which the Danube passes in part of its course. In winter the higher reaches are often frozen and traffic is interrupted, but in summer the whole trip, from Passau to the Iron Gates, is a delightful one, giving an insight into the heart of the country. ”

“ When we come to describe the scenery of the Dolomites it is difficult to do it justice. Chief among the weird attractions of these amazing freaks of nature is the curious red colouring which is seen when the sunset lights the high peaks and the valleys lie in blue-grey shadow. ”

“ Warlike the Magyar still is, and proud as Lucifer, yet with a strange mingling of Oriental calm. None others are so philosophic as the dwellers in the great plain of Hungary, the Alföld, where they follow their occupations as shepherds or wheat-growers. They take the good with the bad and are resigned to evils they cannot cure. ”

“ The building was more of a camp than what we are accustomed to associate with the word palace, and enclosed within its walls many buildings, divided by regular streets running from the four gates in the outer walls. Here the Emperor Diocletian retired in the full prime of life, for he was only fifty-nine, to cultivate his garden and live in peace. Few men nowadays can shake themselves free from the fetters of business, and many postpone the enviable day of freedom simply because they have run so long in harness, they fear to fall without it. ”