I confess 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 manners are what they were two centuries ago, and yet here are the grappling-irons of civilisation.  No doubt a change will come to all this substratum of humanity, but it takes time.  Even the railways in these wilder parts have not exactly settled themselves down to the inexorable limits of “time tables.”  It occurred on this very journey that we stopped at some small station, for no particular reason as far as I could see, for nobody got in or out; but the heat was intense, and so we just made a halt of nearly an hour.  I could