My Austrian escort rides out with me to a certain cross-road, to make
sure of heading me direct toward Budapest, and as we part they bid me
good speed, with a hearty "Eljen." - the Hungarian "Hip, hip, hurrah."
After leaving Presburg and crossing over into Hungary the road-bed is
of a loose gravel that, during the dry weather this country is now
experiencing, is churned up and loosened by every passing vehicle, until
one might as well think of riding over a ploughed field. But there is a
fair proportion of ridable side-paths, so that I make reasonably good
time. Altenburg, my objective point for the night, is the centre of a
sixty-thousand-acre estate belonging to the Archduke Albrecht, uncle of
the present Emperor of Austro-Hungary, and one of the wealthiest land-owners
in the empire. Ere I have been at the gasthaus an hour I am honored by
a visit from Professor Thallmeyer, of the Altenburg Royal Agricultural
School, who invites me over to his house to spend an hour in conversation,
and in the discussion of a bottle of Hungary's best vintage, for the
learned professor can talk very good English, and his wife is of English
birth and parentage. Although Frau Thallmeyer left England at the tender
age of two years, she calls herself an Englishwoman, speaks of England
as "home," and welcomes to her house as a countryman any wandering
Briton happening along. I am no longer in a land of small peasant
proprietors, and there is a noticeably large proportion of the land
devoted to grazing purposes, that in France or Germany would be found
divided into small farms, and every foot cultivated. Villages are farther
apart, and are invariably adjacent to large commons, on which roam flocks
of noisy geese, herds of ponies, and cattle with horns that would make
a Texan blush - the long horned roadsters of Hungary. The costumes of the
Hungarian peasants are both picturesque and novel, the women and girls
wearing top-boots and short dresses on holiday occasions and Sundays,
and at other times short dresses without any boots at all; the men wear