from pesth to the iron gates

Irish Jesuit Province

From Pesth to the Iron GatesAuthor(s): John FallonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 132 (Jun., 1884), pp. 271-281Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20497137 .

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( 271 )

FROM PESTHI TO THE IRON GATES.

BY JOHN FALLON.

ELOW Pesth the Danube continues its southward course for B about two hundred miles, and then bends sharply to the east.

A railway cuts the angle, and gives you the alternative of getting across the country to Bazias in eleven or twelve hours, through the "Puzta " and the Banat of Temesvar. The distance to Bazias by land is about fifty-five Austrian miles-say two hundred and fifty

English-so the rate of travelling is very good. I chose the land route for this stage, just to see the country ancd gain time, and started from Pesth about six o'clock in the evening.

As the distance grew, the Buda hills rapidly faded, the towering B3locksberg became a dream, and I was very soon in the "Puzta," that vast sea-like plain of central Hungary, true home of the Magyar horseman, since first he left his Asiatic steppes, a thousand years ago.

What a field was here for headlong charge and clash of cavalry in thousands, and even myriads, when the fate of Europe and Christi anity so often hung on the result of a day's encounter, sabre against scimitar! Far as the eye can reach, it is plain, always plain, and there are moun.ds artificially raised from which to survey the boundless expanse.

But the " Puzta " is no wilderness; on the contrary, I would ask you to picture it, at least near the capital, as being all in cultivatioin. To me it seemed quite Arcadian to see the happy people, long after our quitting hours at home, still working cheerily in their fields, till the last glimpse of twilight bade them desist, then gaily gilloping to their lhomes in light two-horse waggons, apparently regardless of roads.

A recurring feature in this lovely scene is the pumping engine, worked by horses, just like a thrashing machine, those horses driven by a tiny child, who stands on a little platform erected for him in the centre of the machine, and keeps the horses going quite successfully. Thus is the water pumped up from wells, and sent flowing in rills and rivulets over the thirsty land, and scattered to right and left by men and women with scoops, adding a fresh emerald tint to the marvellouts green of the crops. So now, if you read in old books that Hungary is backward in irrigation, noli credere, but just remember that the direct contrary is the actual truth at present.

I should add that the farming class do not live in detached dwellings on their farms, but in villages, composed of neat-looking cottages. This, of course, is a relic of another age, when they had to club for

VOL. xiI., No. 132. June, 1884. 22



272 From Pesth to the Iron Gates.

defence and protection: and, perhaps, it is somewhat due to the exha lations from the soil, which may render night-time malarious except in favoured spots.

By degrees, as we draw away from the great city, further out into the " Puzta," tillage yields to pasture, and herds of large grey cattle

with gigantic horns graze at liberty. Those herds seem numerous beyond counting, and grey to absolute uniformity. To each herd is attached a shepherd, and to each shepherd an ugly wolfish dog. The shepherd is quite a picture in himself. Fancy a hat expanding like an inverted umbrella, a jacket of shaggy material like sheep's-skin, trousers wide beyond all description, flowing in the evening breeze like skirts; put into this man's hand a long stick like a pole, fancy him standing motionless like a statue, and you may say that you have before you the shepherd of the " Puzta!'

Alas! the sun is setting all too fast for my greedy eyes, but setting like a true monarch in a blaze of glory, turning the western sky and the floating clouds to golden red-a red that deepens, but still is all transparent. Too soon this vanishes, and darkness is on the land.

Yet I had seen enough for one day, and was resigned to sleep. Now let me tell you that sleeping in a Hungarian carriage is a thing well provided for: you draw the seat that is opposite you towards you, you draw the seat that you are sitting on towards it-the clever lupholstery lends itself to the adaptation-and thus you have a perfect couch in less than half a minute. This presupposes merely that the seat opposite you is unoccupied, which was my case, for I had left Pesth in solitary majesty-so far as my compartment was concerned. But as I mention this, I should tell you that, when I awoke in the middle of the night, I found a great dark man sitting beside me, uot an apparition, but a real ponderous human being: he had got in at some station while I was in dreaml:nd. I vowed he was a brigand, and that I would watch him: but sleep to the traveller comes unbidden, and is most despotic. When I awoke again, it was day dawn; my phantom friend had vanished, and my things were intouched.

Have you come to know that, in the Puzta of Hfungary, mirage is a phenomenon of quite usual occurrence in the early summer mornings ? 'Po me, when passing, it was a revelation, and thus it seemed: an

endless lake, parallel with the railway, at a short distance from it on the east, pale blue, undulating, with dim objects in the distance, imperceptibly vanishing before the more distinct and joyous features of tangible nature.

Gradually you feel without being told that you are leaving the great steppe behind you, and getting into the Banat of Temesvar. Bleak pastures and great grey cattle give place to tillage again in this



From Pesth to the Iron Gates. 273

land of abounding fertility, the richest in the Austrian empire, perhaps unsurpassed in Europe. It is a blaclk, moist-looking loam, never in want of enrichment, but a stranger cultivates it at the risk of his life. The natives are acclimatised to all this: and positively before four o'clock this morning I saw them again driving gaily to their work, or already at it. Of course such early and late hours

mean a liberal mid-day siesta; but to see the country alive with a working population, in the cool morning, while the shadows were still long on the earth. was to me like a vision from Arcadia.

Stalking through the quieter fields are tall storks, black and white, as you know them, seeking out their morning food, and by no means alarmed by the passing train, and occasionally as you pass one, of which the head alone is visible, over the grass, corn or maize, the effect is most peculiar-like a white ball moving about spon taneously.

Presently groves are seen, sparse at first, then more plentiful, as if to accentuate the endless green. The trees are acacias, with an odd poplar intermixed-at least this is true of the upper part of the Banat. As you approach the old fortress of Temesvar, oaks take the place of the acacias, and the groves expand into a long spreading forest. Here and there, thrqugh the forest, the woodland opens, the trees give way to green shady recesses and pools of blackish water. Passing by one of these sheltery nooks we came close by a small en campment of gipsies; five or six tents, fifty or sixty people, young and old, basking in the morning sun, or having a bath in the pond which lay near them. One could remark their swarthy complexions, their long raven-black hair, and their supreme uinconcern about us and everything. These Danube regions are favourite camping-grounds for those mysterious children of the east; they form quite a substantial element in the population, but they are evermore the same. Here they are called Tziganes, which reminds one of the Gitanos of Spain, and of the Zingari of Italy; and here again, as elsewhere, we find them standing aloof from their fellow-men, never coalescing, but rather shunning the inconvenient trammels of civilisation and of the police.

From Temesvar downwards, as the country opens out again, you begin to see small flocks of sheep, closely watched by man and dog, white-woolied, black-faced, with straight black horns rising vertically; other flocks without horns, others even with white faces. And, as we still further approach our journey's end, there is an extensive field eultivation of the vine, in the usual method of small shrubs.

We should not forget that it was under the walls of Temesvar that the brave Hungarian insurrection received its death-blow in 1849; and, strange enough, it was here also that the peasants' rebellion under George Doza was so cruelly crushed by the nobles, more than



274 From Pestlz to the Iron Gates.

three centuries before that. But there is nothing to remind you now of those bygone days of fierce fighting: all you see is a lot of waggon loads of coal-peaceful products of industry, being brought down to the Danube, to replenish the fuel stores of the steamers.

SnJon a short but lovely range of hills rises suddenly in the near east, and as suddenly ends, the bighest hill capped by a tower; and

iow at length we reach Bazias, and the noble river is flowing at our feet.

Big as the Danube is above Pesth, it is at least twice as large a river at Bazias. In fact the Servian shore opposite the station looks quite dim in the distance, and as if it would require a very good cannon to send a ball across to it.

I had to wait a full hour for the arrival of the down steamer, and this gave me more than ample time to have a good look at the natives, amongst whom I was to be for the next two days. Already here, although not geographically, yet most practically, as far as race and costume and language go, we are in Waliachia, and the change from the Miagyar lands is visible at a glance. A Wallack wears a conical hat of sheep's-skin, very much like a fool's cap; his principal garments are of wbite linen, more or less embroidered; over these he sports a wide red sash round the waist, and an open vest without sleeves, embroidered and edged with some fancy colour: the probability is that he is barefooted, and has a cigar in his mouth: things which to us seem incongruous, but in his fine climate are quite natural. A

Wallack woman wears a kind of turban, surmounting her long black hair; her dress is also of white linen, profusely embroidered, and she ,wears Two striped aprons deeply fringed, one in front, the other behind: in fact her everyday costume is quite ft for a fancy ball. A Llot of those people were having their morning meal at the station, early as it was (six o'clock, a.m.), and I could note that they

made a hearty breakfast of brown bread and dried fish, cheese and beer, and finished it off with native cigars all round, men and women alike.

"c Pensez-y-bien." These are the lineal descendants of the famous Dacians, whose perpetual inroads gave such trouble to the Roman empire, even when it was in the fulness of its power and pride I To the ancestors of these meek-looking and rather degenerate men, Rome

was fain to pay lump sums of money, and humiliating yearly tribute, just to keep them from crossing the river. Even in the palmy days of

Augustus, the Dacian was a bugbear to the Roman people: " Con jurato descendens 9acu8 ab istro," as Virgil says. Trajan thought he had the incursive race utterly subdued, after he had conquered the brave Decebalus, and we owe to that fond delusion his magnificent column, which commemorates their features, their costume, and their




temporary defeats. But all in vain he colonised their country; the " emigration scheme " was a failure, then as now; but it produced one extraordinary result: it Romanised the Dacian language, and made the Dacian people imagine they were Romans. The Wallacks speak a Roman dialect and claim a Roman descent to this day.

True to time, a light steamer soon drops alongside, and presently wre are gliding rapidly down stream. Being Hungarian, our boat keeps along the left bank, giving a "wide berth" to the Servian shore. But soon that shore tightens in, and we pass rapidly between charmingly wooded slopes, all of primeval oak, spreading away through ravine and glen, and coating the mountain sides down to the

water's edge. Old Turkish villages and towns flit past us, all ending in " ova;"^

first it is Moldova, then Glandova, then Drenkova, and so on. And down near the water's edge isolated cottages appear, from interval to interval, built upon timber stilts, and standing elevated in the air at least ten feet above the water level. Of course those cottages are not of stone, but of timber, wattles, and mud. But they give one a real istic idea of the lake dwellings of ancient Switzerland, and the " crannogues " of old Ireland, and thus they connect our prosaic nine teenth century with the prehistoric past.

Now the banks tighten in more and more, and get steeper and loftier. We are entering a grand defile. At the very mouth of it a rock rises sheer out of the rushing water, like the tusk of a rhinoceros, to a clear height of twenty-five or thirty feet. It is called the

Babakai, ancd the legend is that an old Pasha left a wife here and sailed away; and to her imploring cries he answered ever: "Babakai, Babakai," which in Turkish means: "Repent, Repent." I hope the old tyrant was made to repent ere he died, if the tale be true.

High up on the Servian side is a vast and magnificent ruin of shattered battlements and turrets, reared from cliffs as steep and jagged and time-stained as itself. This is the castle of Golumbacs,

which gives its name to the defile; and I verily believe that morttl eye never rested on more picturesque ruin.

And as high up on the Hungarian side, are caves, looking like mere port-holes in the giant rock-face of the mountain. In one of these caves St. George slew the dragon! . . . and every year, during the dog-days, there issues from that cave a cloud of midges, which spreads away even into the fBanat of Temesvar, and stings outlying cattle and unwary children to madness, and often to death. People

may consider that the dragon was a myth, but the midges are a yearly and undeniable reality. Fortunately for me their season had not yet arrived.

And now the mountains no longer slope: they spring, they rear



276 From Pest/i to the Iron Gates.

themselves vertically, and vegetation is almost impossible, except in the side ravines. And the water no longer flows silent and sullen, like an uncontradicted despot, but frets and raves along its shallow, rocky bed in noisy waves, which seem to jamp backward against the fierce current. We are in the midst of the shoals and rapids. Except

when the river is high, all navigation is utterly suspended; but thanks to the rains and early melting of the snows it is possible now; the steersman and captain know each hidden rock, each dangerous ledge, to a foot, to an inch: they point the docile boat from one natural landmark to another with as much accuracy as you would a rifle, and, thanks to them, the " shooting of the rapids," tier by tier, and stage by stage, loses its terrors; it is done without mishap, because without

mistake; it is just a pleasant excitement, and a most perfect delight when it is over.

A singular geological development attracts attention, high up on the Servian side, as we approach the eastern extremity of the defile of

Golumnbacs: it is what I would call a long ribbon of stratified sand stone, red, pink, and white, in distinct layers, that ribbon contorted and twisted, in the most fantastic ways, into every imaginable form of curve and angle, but always preserving the same width, and retain ing its continuity of pattern for at least a mile, and probably much

more, for it belts round a promontory of matchless boldness, and only disappears when the rapid steamer leaves that bold headland behind.

Emerging from the defile, the boat speeds a straight course through smooth water, across a most lovely lake-like expanse, for all the world like the middle lake of Killarney. From this no exit is visible, till, quite of a sudden, we dart into a fresh defile, guarded by towering rocks now white, now black, or, fantastically dark grey; and here the river is at its narrowest, and the mountains at both sides are at their loftiest and steepest. You could easily jerk a stone from the steamer to either shore, so nearly do they approach. No reefs or shallows are

here, but the water rushes along with a sullen, sulky flow, and I believe is of immense depth. And what a sky line, as you look up on either side ! It is all zig-zags and pinnacles, and real flying buttresses open to the sky, like a Gothic cathedral, where the hand of Gothic architect never could have reached. And down the steep sides come torrents cascading, tumbling from rock to rock till they reach the river. This is the defile of Kazan; and I can truly say that I had never seen or conceived anything half so grand.

And in this defile of Kazan, only twenty or thirty feet above the water, on the Servian side, is a ledge, chiselled out of the face of the rock disappearing at intervals, then reappearing again always in the same horizontal line, and thus running along the whole defile, myste rious mortice holes are chiselled undereath this ledge, with equal regularity. Now what can this be? It was a problem, neglected and




unsolved, till within living memory, and then a cunning archaeologist deciphered a tablet, which is also incised in the face of the rock, and thus the whole truth came out: this is the " 'Via Trajana," the mortice holes were for beams and stay-posts; the ledge was for planks to rest on; the tablet commemorates the construction by the adopted son of Nerva. Of course you cannot decipher the inscription as you hurriedly pass in a steamer, you can only see the tablet; it requires a close inspection and a practised eye to trace the words: but since archamo logists, who disagree when they can, are agreed on the subject, we

may say there is no doubt, and from the steamer you can plainly see the tablet, and the ledge, and the mortice holes, so that "1 those who run may read."

On the opposite side the Hungarians have tunnelled a coach-road, fitting pendant to the " Via Trajana," which makes a visible groove along the face of the defile, and soon, I believe, this coach-road will be a railway. Thus does the nineteenth century come into lurid con trast with the second; but the second holds its own, if we allow for the disparity of means at the disposal of Trajan's workmen.

If one reflects on it, nothing can better paint the sheer steepness of the mountain face on either side than this ledging and widening out

with beams on one side, to make a mere tow-path; and all this tun nelling on the other, to make a coach-road! To me the wish was paramount, to walk that coach-road from end to end, and if ever I revisit that beautiful land I shall certainly do so, unless the iron rails have monopolised it all.

It was drawing towards evening when the boat touched at Alt Orsova, and I descended, in company with a young Austrian attache, who was en route for Constantinople, but just going to spend a few days at Mehadia. What is Mehadia ? It is an old Roman watering place, the Buxton or Aix-les-Bains of south-eastern Europe, where every ill that flesh is heir to finds a cure, and so those who are suffer ing resort to it from all parts; so do imposters who are not suffering at all, but merely in search of pleasure. Our young attachk was one of these, and he wanted me to join him, as the place is only eight

miles distant; but I was intent on seeing the Iron Gates next morning by full daylight, and so he went off alone, in a small bone-shaking phaeton of native manufacture2 driven by a Wallack, and drawn by a pair of Connemara-looking ponies, all tinkling with bells.

The Alt-Orsova hotel is dedicated to the KING OF H UNGARY, not the Emperor of Austria, It is the same personage, but the Hungarians are very particular not to let the empire infiltrate itself within their territory even by a title. Opposite the hotel is a formal grove of acacias, planted with the regularity of nine-pins; beneath one of these I sat down at a table to dine, and presently I fell asleep. But pre sently also I was awoke by a band of Tziganes, playing on violins of



278 From Pesth to the Iron Gates.

every size, and on a zither. They were all young men, with -wonder fully dark hair and eyes and complexion. Heavy raindrops began to fall, and Tziganes and dinner and I had to adjourn into the hotel for shelter. The landlord conveyed to me that for one gulden (two shillings) they might be engaged for the entire night. So I immedi ately begged of him to secure them for this magnificent sum, at my expense; and, further, to do the thing " en grand," I asked him to join me at dinner, to have a little chat in Wallachian.

Tzigane bands are now pretty well-known. In Paris they are quite the rage, and two shillings very many times multiplied would not buy them for an evening. Civilisation has made them mercenary, but I hope none the less artistic. My Tziganes at Orsova played all sorts of airs, fromn waltzes suggestive of Strauss to " God save the Queen." And then they got into their own native melodies, with those wailing, moaning, plaintive strains, which die away in a minor key, and remind you of things far away, dreams or scenes that you will never see again. And it struck me that the leader was improvising at times, and just giving "the motive," and that, quiclk as thought, his companions responded to the new idea, and expanded it in harmony of the weirdest kind. . . I afterwards met a similar band near Mohacs, far away up stream, on the borders of Slavonia, and engaged them for just the same figure. Thus they wander, those children of song, aliens where ever they go, but certainly endowed with the redeeming quality of being

musicians to the core. I should have told you that, as they played, the natives gathered in, and we had quite a concert.

But what about my Wallachian dialogue with the landlord ? Simply this: he played his strange dialect on me with cool audacity, pretending to believe that I understood every word, and I replied with a motley mixture of Italian words, and Latin, and French, regardless of all syntax, pretty much as the masons of Babel must have spoken, after their primitive tongue had got mixed up. The language really sounded something like Italian, only with an infusion of gutturals, and very many words and bits of sentences are distinctly recognisable to any one having a knowledge of Latin. Considering that itis sixteen strong centuries since Aurelian withdrew the Roman colony to the south side of the river, and that intercommunication and intermarriage must have laboured under considerable difficulties from that date, considering further that the Goths actually settled in Dacia, and became masters of it, the Latinity of this mysterious language is more than marvellous: it is simply niiraculous.

At a very early hour next morning I had to be at the river-side to meet the boat that was to bring me a stage further "to the Iron

Gates," and to Trajan's Bridge. What was my surprise in this out of-the-way place, and at this unlikely hour (it was certainly not yet five o'clock), to hear " la prire d'une Vierye " well played on a piano;



From Pesti to the Iron Gates. 279

the music came streaming from an open window of the hotel, that looked on the inner quadrangle. The fact is, early as I considered it, the whole'little population of the place was already awake and about: such are the hours in this climate.

The boat was a Servian one straight from Belgrade, and most of the passengers wore the genuine Turkish costume, the women veiled up to the eyes. It is not etiquette to stare them: it sometimes leads to a "coup de couteau." So I stood on the brilge, with a young French official, who was going to Alexandria, and dressed in the orthodox black and fez of fashionable Orientals. There we stood, shivering in the chill morning air, till the sun came out with a blaze from a curtain of white mist, and then what a scene was before us!

It was not that the river had contracted, for it was nearly a mile wide; nor that the banks had become steep and towering again, for they sloped with velvety woodland of dark green. But all the vast expanse of water was seething and bubbling, and eddying in whirlpools of every size, some of them so strong that the depressions were distinctly visible hundreds of yards off. In dry seasons the treacherous ledges, which underlie the surface of the water, are dis tinctly seen spreading away from bank to bank like mill-weirs, and the river cascades over them with quite a visible and noisy fall; not iilore than seven or eight feet in any one place, yet quite enough to

nmake navigation impossible. But thanks to the high water, and to the unerring eye of the pilot, the boat is at present able not only to shoot the rapids, but also to reascend them, if not with equal ease, at least with equal apparent certainty. I had experience of this on the return journey, before the day was out.

And such are the famous " Iron Gates " (Demnir Kupi in Turkish) which foreigners are so anxious to see, and which certainly are worth a long journey, particularly when yotu can " shoot" them, as now. After about a mile of this pleasant excitement, which must be as good as a steeplechase, the gentle vessel glided like a swan through the deep, silent waters.

It stopped for a few minutes at Tur-Severin (pronounced Toor Severeeni), where I landed, to see the little that remains of Trajan's Bridge, and to await the arrival of a steamer going up stream.

It is matter of history that Trajan Lriuilt a bridge across the Ister, to connect his new conquest and colony of Dacia with the rest of the

Roman empire, which was then bounded by the river. Of his great reign I venture to think that bridge was one of the greatest exploits; aInd here, within stone's-throw of the landing-place, is all that remains of it at present visible. When the river is very low the remnants of the colossal piers may still be traced at regular intervals across the stream, which is here three quarters of a mile wide. But when the river is high, as now, all that can be seen is the ruined abutment near



28o From Pesth to the Iron Gates.

which I am standing. It is built of blocks of artificially-made conglomerate, in fact coarse pebbles bonded together with cement, like our modern concrete. Fancy a bridge of nineteen arches, every one of them with a clear span of a hundred and fifty feet, resting on piers sixty feet in diameter ! Whether the arches were built of solid masonry, or of wood by some cunning device of carpentry is a problem for the learned; one naturally inclines to the wooden theory, considering the abundance of timber in the neighbourhood, coupled with the intensely practical character of the Romans; and considering also the fatal facility with which Hadrian destroyed the structure within fifteen years of its erection.

Here ends my forward journey; homewarrd is now the word. A perfectly appointed Austrian steamer, going from Rustchuck to Pesth, soon takes me up; it is full of people from Constantinople and the principalities, and I discover that I am within forty-two hours of the Bosphorus. Alas! that I did not go on with the small Servian boat this morning!

A flag of honour is flying from the masthead, a sign that some prince is on board: it is the archbishop metropolitan of Bucharest (I suppose of the Greek Church); and a stately man is he. A tall black velvet hat, like a drum; long black hair, gathered in behind; a bronzed countenance; a perfectly white beard, notwithstanding the black hair; a violet gray pelisse, bordered with brown fur; a gray brown soutane, with a red sash and gold clasps: such is the appearance and the costume; and he sits aloof from the other passengers, only conversing

with the captain Among the travellers from Constantinople, all in black andfez, I

noticed a young man fingering a string of beads quite unconsciously, as he leaned over the bulwarks. I asked him was he saying prayers; he smiled, and explained that Orientals have this habit to banish care, and they call the beads a " chasse-ennui." He bestowed his on me, of polished hard-wood, strung on silk. The natives of Morocco have also this habit, and no doubt the " chasse-ennui " got with them into Spain.

Could it be that St. Dominick, finding it in vogue, turned it to a loftier use in the world-wide devotion of the Rosary ?

Our gallant boat has reascended the Iron Gates and passed Alt -

Orsova, and makes its steady way through the defile of Kazan. Here the tablet and the ledge and mortice-holes of the " Via Trajana" are as visible as daylight. Two large brown eagles come hovering round, one of them in a particularly defiant manner. It would have been perfectly easy to shoot them both, but no gun was at hand.

Immediately after surmounting the rapids of the Golumbacs defile the boat stopped at Glandova, to take in coal: I suppose till then it had avoided having a ton or hundred weight beyond the bare needful. The coaling process was quite a lively affair: a score or so of young



The Blind Man of Yericho. 281

Wallacks, barefooted and smoking, each with a wheel-barrow full, were kept running in Indian file, in by one gangway, then out by another, after tumbling the contents into the hold, and as each passed outwards he got a brass token, and a similar token for every barrow he put in. They were evidently paid by the number of barrows they could show tokens for, so that it was a perfect race between them.

While [this was going on, three or four huge pigs were rooting about the place, quite "d a'I rlandaise," and I note this unpoetic fact, because they were absolutely covered with brown hair, long and soft, like bears, which they much resembled. Amid the boundless oak

woods of Servia and Wallachia pigs are a staple article of production, and no mean source of wealth. A man may be a pig farmer and a prince at the same time; and, if I mistake not, the father or grand father of the present ruler of Servia was "in the trade." A classic breed also, if you reflect on it, is this true living representative of the "lanigera 8U8 " of antiquity.

A young man, one of the passengers, landed, and climbed the steep face of the mountain-side to gather wild flowers: it made one nervous to see him scrambling through the trees, and clinging to the over

hanging branches as he ascended. But such a bouquet as he brought back! small wild flowers of every hue, intermixed with fems. He gave it to a Wallachian lady on board. I wish I could present one like it to you, dear friend, if you have accompanied me thus far, in token of best wishes and-farewell!

THE BLIND MAN OF JERICHO.

THE blind man sits by the highway side, A beggar, helpless, by all denied;

Unmark'd is he, as they pass along, Sightless, bewilder'd, in that dense throng;

He craves an alms from the foremost few,

But pauses when nearer the concourse drew. Thicker and thicker their footsteps fall,

While he sits wondering over it all. He knows no cause for their gath'ring there

'Tis waneless night to his ghastly stare. (Alas! he never yet saw one ray

Of beauteous light in the brightest day.)



from pesth to the iron gates

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