What becomes of the unhappy beings who people our prisons? What becomes of their families, their wives, their children? What fate awaits the prisoners when their time of imprisonment has expired; what have their families to look forward to?
Answers to these questions can be given by all who are acquainted with our penal institutions.
If the unhappy lot of our criminals be compared, honestly and without prejudice, with that of the exiles in Siberia, the result will not be doubtful. Every true friend of humanity must echo the wish which came to me in the distant East, and which has never since left me:
“If only we had a Siberia too: it would be better for our criminals, and better for ourselves”.
AN ORNITHOLOGIST ON THE DANUBE.
Hungary was, and is, and will continue to be one of the goals of the German ornithologist’s ambition. Situated more favourably than any other country in Europe, lying as it does between the North Sea and the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Mediterranean, the great northern plain and the Alps—including within its boundaries both the North and the South, steppes and mountains, forests, rivers, and marshes—it offers great advantages and attractions to resident and wandering birds alike, and thus possesses a richer bird-fauna perhaps than any other country in our quarter of the globe. Enthusiastic descriptions of this wealth, from the pen of our most illustrious investigators and masters, have contributed not a little to increase and strengthen the longing—I would almost call it inborn—that all the bird-lovers of Germany have to see Hungary. It is strange, however, that this beautiful, rich country, lying so near to us, has been so rarely visited by Germans.
I myself had seen only its capital and what one can see of the country from the railway; I therefore shared most thoroughly in the longing of which I have just spoken. It was to be fulfilled, but only to return even more ardently thereafter. “None walks unpunished beneath the palms”, and no lover of birds can spend May-tide in Fruskagora without having for ever after a longing to return.
“Would you like,” asked my gracious patron, the Crown Prince Rudolph, “to accompany me to South Hungary for some eagle-shooting? I have definite reports of perhaps twenty eyries, and I think that we should all be able to learn much, if we visited them and observed diligently.”
Twenty eyries! One must have been banished for long years on the dreary flats of North Germany, one must have gloated over the bright pictures raised in one’s mind by the glowing reports of some roaming ornithologist, to appreciate the joy with which I agreed to go. Twenty eyries, at no very great distance from Vienna and not far from Pesth: I should not have been my father’s son had I remained indifferent. The days seemed hours when we were busy with all sorts of preparations, and again they seemed to lengthen out into weeks, such was my impatient desire to be off.
It was but a small travelling party that started from Vienna on the second day of the Easter holidays (1878), but we were merry and hopeful, eager for sport and energetic. Besides the august lord of the chase and his illustrious brother-in-law, there were but three—Obersthofmeister Count Bombelles, Eugen von Homeyer, and myself. A day later, at Pesth, we got aboard the swift and comfortable vessel which carried us towards the mouth of the “blonde” Danube. In Lenten mist suffused with morning sunlight, the proud Kaiserburg stood out before us, and the gardens of the Bloxberg were bright with the first green of the young year, as we took leave of the capital of Hungary.