There was no time for further discussion, for our breakfast was ready (a very bad breakfast it was, too), and the vehicle we had chartered the night before was also waiting to convey us some miles into the interior of the country, to the soda manufactory at Boeska.  On our way we passed through the village of Karasconfalu, inhabited entirely by Polish Jews.  The dirt and squalor of this place beggar description.  The dwellings are not houses, but are simply holes burrowed in the sandbanks, with an upright stone set up in front to represent a door; windows and chimneys are unknown.  If it were not for a few erections more like ordinary human habitations, the place might have passed for a gigantic rabbit-warren.  As we drove through we saw some of the villagers engaged in slaughtering calves and sheep in the middle of the road, the blood running down into a self-made gutter; it was a sickening sight.  The people themselves have a most peculiar physiognomy, especially the men, who in addition to long beards wear corkscrew ringlets, which give them a very odd appearance.  Their principal garment is a kind of long brown dressing-gown, which in its filthy grimness suits the wearer down to the ground.  The feet are bound up in thongs of leather.  The shoemaker’s trade is apparently unknown in these parts.  The inhabitants of this delightful village have the reputation of being a set of born cheats and swindlers; if it is true, then certainly the moral is plain, that dishonesty is not a thriving trade.  The fact is, being all of one sort, the profession is overcrowded, and the result is that the sharpest amongst them emigrate, or rather I should say go farther a-field to exercise their craft.  I am told that many of the low Jews, who make themselves a byword and a reproach by their practices of cheating and usury throughout Hungary, may be traced back to this foul nest in the Marmaros Mountains.  It would be well for the credit of the Jewish community in Hungary, as well as elsewhere, if something were done to raise these people out of the utter degradation which surrounds them from their birth.

Not far beyond Karasconfalu we came upon Boeska, situated in the midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery, not at all suggestive of the neighbourhood of a chemical manufactory.  Putting up at the house of the manager of the works, we remained here two or three days, during which time we made some excursions into the heart of the mountains.  One of our drives took us some miles along the side of the beautiful river Theiss, which though a proverbial sluggard when it reaches the plain, is here a swift and impetuous stream.  Our object was to see the timber-rafts pass over the rapids; it was a very exciting scene, and as this was a favourable season, owing to the state of the river, we came in just at the right time.  The Rusniacks—­the people generally employed in this perilous work—­certainly display great skill and coolness in the management of their ticklish craft.  If by any mischance the timbers come in contact with the rocks, then the danger is extreme; and hardly a year passes that some of the poor fellows do not get carried away in the swirling waters, which have made for themselves deep and treacherous holes in this part of the stream.