It was getting towards evening before our train appeared, and when it stopped at the station as wild a looking crew turned out of the carriages as I ever remember to have seen.  On inquiry I found that these people were Rusniacks.  Their occupation at this time of the year is to convey rafts down the Theiss.  It seems their work was done, and they were returning by train.  After the halt of ten minutes, and when the passengers were resuming their seats, I found that these fellows were all crowded into some empty horse-boxes attached to the train.  The officials treated them as if they were very little better than cattle.  These people, with their shoeless feet encased in thongs of leather, with garments unconscious of the tailor’s art, and in some instances regardless of the primary object of clothes as a human institution, were the most uncivilised of any I had yet seen in Hungary.

These Rusniacks, or “Little Russians,” as they are called, are tolerably numerous—­not less than 470,000, according to statistical returns.  They are to be found almost exclusively in the north-east of Hungary.  They were fugitives in the old days from Russia, to whom they are intensely antagonistic, having probably suffered from her persecutions.  In religion they are dissenters from the orthodox Greek Church, assimilating more with Roman Catholicism.  These people are another variety in the strange mixture of races to be found in Hungary.  It is thought, and it would seem probable, that the very fact of the military conscription will help to civilise these Rusniacks by drawing them out of their savage isolation in the wild valleys of the Marmaros Mountains.

There are many peculiarities respecting the races inhabiting the northern parts of Hungary.  It would be a great mistake to put the Slavs of the north in the same category with the Slavs of the south:  the former are on far better terms with the Magyars; they are for the most part contented, hard-working people, not troubling themselves at all about Panslavism.  The reason is not far to seek.  The Slovacks, as they are called by way of distinction, numbering about two millions, do not belong to the Greek Church.  The greater proportion are Roman Catholics, the rest Lutherans and Calvinists.  Many of the Catholics are said to be descended from refugees who fled from the tyranny of the Greek Church in Polish Russia.

After leaving Kiraly-haza we got into charming scenery.  As we approached the Carpathians we passed through vast oak-forests, and here and there had a glimpse of the Theiss rushing along over its stony bed.  Occasionally we caught sight of herds of buffaloes bathing in the river.  It is difficult to imagine that these fierce-looking creatures, with their massive shaggy heads, can ever be tractable; yet they can be managed, though only by kindness—­“the rod of correction they cannot bear.”  At length we reached the end of our railway journey.  Marmaros Szigeth is the present terminus of the line, and I should say will very probably remain such; for the iron road would hardly meander through the denies and over the heights of the Carpathians, to descend into the sparsely-inhabited wilds of the Bukovina.  We sought out the principal inn at Szigeth, a wretched place, with only one room and a single bed at our disposal.