Great Hungarian Plain

“ Besides the Carpathian mountains Hungary also contains a less considerable portion of the Alps, belonging to the so-called Noric Alps. They lie in trans-Danubian Hungary, the Pannonia of old. They embrace the Austro-Styrian border-range, between the valleys of the Danube and Drave; the Vértes-Bakony ranges, of which the Bakony forest forms a part; and the group of the Buda mountains, producing the celebrated wines of that name.
Croatia and Slavonia, which are parts of the Hungarian realm, are also traversed by mountains belonging to the Alpine system. ”

“ And the kind priest, who after life's vicissitudes had found anchorage in this forlorn village in the midst of the plains, knew exactly how to deal with these childlike souls. Like those who live their lives upon the sea, the Hungarian peasant sees only immensity around him, and above him that wonderful dome which hides its ineffable mysteries behind glorious veils of sunset and sunrise, of storm and of fantastic clouds. The plain stretches its apparently limitless expanse to a distance which he—its child—has never reached. ”

“ Two thirds of Hungary consist of mountainous districts, but one third has the richest soil in Europe.
Great rivers run through the heart of the country, giving it the fertility which is its great source of wealth. The great lowlands, or "Alföld," as the Magyars call them, are surrounded by a chain of mountains whose heights are nearly equal to some Alpine districts. There are three principal mountain ranges—the Tátra, Mátra, and Fátra—and four principal rivers—the Danube, Theiss, Drave, and Save. ”

“ For there are people who are ignorant of all history but that of their own village, and who, consequently, have no idea that there has been any change in our country ever since the expulsion of the Turks. The peculiar gravity which characterises the Magyars is partly a historical reminiscence and partly the result of that gloomy tract of our country which is chiefly inhabited by the Magyar population. What traveller can traverse our vast plains, and keep his temper? The virgin forest, which at one time covered that plain, is gone; the powerful life of Nature is fled ”

“ The Magyars inhabit the great central plains of Hungary which constitutes ethnologically a vast island of Magyars in a sea of Slavs. The Carpathian slopes on the Hungarian side of the ranges, including the mounts of the Tatra—with the exception of the Zips district, which is peopled with German-Saxon colonists—are inhabited, in their western parts, by two million Slovaks, in the eastern parts by half a million Ruthenians or Little Russians, and on the Transylvanian side by nearly three million Rumanians. ”

“ They come for the most part from the mountains of Transylvania, which bound Hungary to the eastward. I purchased one that galloped well, as indeed they almost all do. The country is excellent for breeding them, from the quantity of grass it produces; but they have the fault of being a little headstrong, and particularly difficult to shoe; so that I have sometimes seen them obliged to be cast on the ground to be shod.
The mountains just spoken of contain mines of gold and salt, each of which pay annually to the king one hundred Hungarian florins. ”

“ The various races of Hungary are distributed either in compact ethnographical groups, in larger or smaller colonies surrounded by other nationalities, or—e.g. in the Banat—so intermingled as to defy exact definition. [3] The Magyars occupy almost exclusively the great central plain intersected by the Danube and the Theiss, being in an overwhelming majority in 19 counties (99.7% in Hajdu, east of the Theiss) . With these may be grouped the kindred population of the three Szekel counties of Transylvania. ”

“ Stalls had been built up and down the sides of the street and these were filled with fruit, melons, embroidery, clothes, and wonderful crockery. Plates and jugs in gay colours and artistic designs have been made by the peasants in this part of Hungary for hundreds of years, and in the cottages one can see, hung along the walls under the rafters, jugs, cups, and platters of great [62] beauty. No peasant would part with his family china, as he would feel disgraced unless he could display it up on his walls.
Ox carts lumbered down the streets, the huge horns of the oxen frightening Marushka. ”

“ The extent of the water system of a country and its distribution is always of the first importance. In this respect, too, Hungary has been blessed by nature. Of the sea she has but little; a small portion only of the Adriatic washes her shores, the so-called Hungarian Sea-Coast, where Fiume, the only important Hungarian seaport city, is situated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was glad to see the familiar valley of Gyergyó away westward, with its numerous villages and green pasturage. The same physical peculiarity pervades the whole of Hungary. Whenever you get a vale of any extent, it is as flat as if it were a bit of the great plain. Everywhere you have the impression that formerly the waters of a lake must have covered the level verdure of the valley. As soon as I caught sight of St Miklos I dismissed my guide, for his services were no longer required, and I could get on quicker without him. I had still a long distance to go, for I was not far below the summit. ”

“ Rusins of Hungary have played a considerable role in the history of Hungary ever since the Arpad dynasty. Magyar writers pretend that Rusins are comparatively recent immigrants. That is true only as regards part of the race. The oldest Hungarian chronicler, known as Anonymus, a notary of King Bela, states that a large number of Russians joined the Magyar prince, Almos, when he arrived in Hungary, and settled on his lands. He relates that the Russian duke of Galicia ordered two thousand archers and three thousand peasants to guide the Magyars to Hungary across the Carpathian forests. ”

“ The centrifugal forces within the Hungarian kingdom are thus increased by the attraction of kindred nationalities established beyond its borders, a fact which is of special importance in considering the vexed and difficult racial problem in Hungary.
Agriculture.—Hungary is pre-eminently an agricultural country and one of the principal wheat-growing regions of Europe. At the census of 1900 nearly 69% of the total population of the country derived their income from agriculture, forestry, horticulture and other agricultural pursuits. ”

“ Alexander Petöfi, the great Hungarian poet, in one of his beautiful poems, sings thus of his native land:
“If the earth be God’s crown
Our country is its fairest jewel.”
And truly were we able to ascend the airy heights and obtain a bird’s-eye view of Hungary, we would fain admit that it is one of the fairest and most blessed spots on the face of the earth.
In the Northwest of Hungary, on the banks of the Danube, begins the mountainous region known under the name of the Carpathian range, which for beauty is not surpassed by the Alps, and in extent fairly rivals them. ”

“ On the western side, west of the Raab, the heights drained by the river are peopled by Germans and, in spite of a complex boundary zone, a convenient line of demarcation could be drawn upon the basis of elevation. Southward the old-time utility of the Drave as the dividing line between Croat and Hungarian remains unimpaired to this day. In the east, however, around the confluence of this river with the Danube and towards the Theiss valley the swamp lands have repelled the ease-loving Hungarian as effectively as the mountains to the east and north. ”

“ Ever since the appearance of those gifted and valiant Asiatics, the Magyars, in the Danubian plain in the ninth century, the Pannonian basin has been united into a state which has shown a remarkable vitality and durability, and whose frontiers, in spite of some temporary fluctuations, have on the whole remained singularly unchanged. If ancient status of possession, economic cohesion, and what may be called the geographic fitness of things, were all the factors that need be taken into account, the Hungarian state, in spite of all its misdeeds, ought to have come through the World War intact. ”

“ The Wallacks pursue their ruthless destruction of the forests, and the law seems powerless to arrest the mischief. At present there is wood and enough, but the time will come when the country at large must suffer from this reckless waste. There are about twenty-three million acres of forest in Hungary, including almost the only oak-woods left in Europe. The great proportion of the forest-land belongs to the State, hence the supervision is less keen, and the depredations more readily winked at. ”

“ For one thing, there have been too few Rusins in Hungary compared with other nationalities. Their number in recent decades did not exceed half a million. It failed to increase not only by reason of forcible magyarization, practised during the last half a century, but also by reason of mean material conditions of existence. These poor Carpathian people have not enough land to satisfy their modest needs. On the territory inhabited by them most of the soil belongs to great noblemen who were in the habit of leasing the fields to Jews recently arrived from Russia and Galicia. ”

“ THE EVOLUTION OF THE LEAF-SHAPED SWORD WE have seen that the Alpine people were the earliest inhabitants of the mountain zone, west of the Hungarian plain, and that they had arrived there at an early date, bringing with them from the east the custom of living in pile-dwellings and the germs of agriculture. Whether they were living also in Hungary seems uncertain, though it is possible that they dwelt in the ring of mountain land that surrounds the plain. ”

“ The climate, except in the marshy parts, is generally healthy. It is well-watered, and forms one of the most fertile districts of Hungary. Wheat, barley, oats, rye, maize, flax, hemp and tobacco are grown in large quantities, and the products of the vineyards are of a good quality. Game is plentiful and the rivers swarm with fish. The mineral wealth is great, including copper, tin, lead, zinc, iron and especially coal. Amongst its numerous mineral springs, the most important are those of Mehadia, with sulphurous waters, which were already known in the Roman period as the Thermae Herculis. ”

“ Most of the large landowners in the now “unredeemed” lands of Hungary are Hungarian aristocrats; and the peasants, although Magyars, knowing the failure of land partition to make progress in Hungary, are not sure that they would be better off if they returned to their old allegiance. Up to this time the oppression of Hungarians in the liberated states has been confined to landowners and townspeople; and the Hungarian peasants have, in fact, profited by this. ”

“ The tract of territory which, on our maps, we describe as Hungary, is peopled by two distinct races of men;—the Hungarians, who inhabit the great plain of the Danube, of which Cormorn may be regarded as the centre; and the Slavonians, by whom the mountain districts are occupied, as well in Carpatia and Transylvania, as in Croatia and the rugged districts that border upon Styria. Of these, the Hungarians are not considered to amount to more than four millions of souls at the utmost; whereas the numbers of the Slavonians fall not short of six millions. ”

“ The effect of tapping these out-lying districts is already producing its natural result; the cultivator finds a ready market for his produce, and the value of land is rising, and "must rise in Hungary," says Professor Wrightson in his report on the agriculture of the Austro-Hungarian empire. [23]
In approaching Debreczin we noticed frequent instances of the efflorescence of soda-salts upon the surface of the soil. This occurrence greatly impairs the fertility of some parts of the Alföld. Land drainage would probably cure this evil, but I do not fancy any serious experiments have been tried. ”

“ They therefore combined to restore the former government, and were headed by the great nobles who had been deprived of their offices—Báthory, the late palatine, and Alexius Thurzó. The league is known in Hungarian history under the name of the “Kalandos” Society—the word “kalandos” having in the Magyar language the meaning of “adventurous,” but in truth the word was derived from the “Kalends,” the society being in the habit of meeting on the “Kalends,” or first of each month. ”

“ He was not communicative to me; his knowledge of German seemed limited to the bargaining process, a lesson often repeated, I suspect. As time wore on the heat became almost tropical; as for the dust, I felt as if I had swallowed a sandbank, and was joyful at the near prospect of quenching my thirst at Weisskirchen, now visible in the distance.
Hungarian towns look like overgrown villages that have never made up their minds seriously to become towns. The houses are mostly of one story, standing each one alone, with the gable-end, blank and windowless, towards the road. ”

“ In former times Germans and Poles were the chief visitors, but now people come from all parts to look at the wonderful ice-caves (where one can skate in the hottest summer) , the waterfalls, and the great pine forests, and make walking, driving, and riding tours right up to the snow-capped mountains, preferring the comparative quiet of this Alpine district to that of Switzerland. Almost every place has some special mineral water, and among the greatest wonders of Hungary are the hot mud-baths of Pöstyén. ”