"In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch
Is giving too little, and asking too much."
No sooner had we landed on the Hungarian side of the river than up came a customhouse official, who informed me that I must pay duty for my horse. Of course, as a law-respecting Briton, I was ready enough to comply; but the fellow could not tell me what the charge was, saying his chief was absent, and might not be back for some hours.
This was exasperating to the last degree; the more so that it seemed so stupid that the man left in charge could not consult a tariff of taxes, or elicit from the villagers some information. He was stolidly obstinate, and refused to let my horse go at any price, though I offered him what H—— and I both thought a reasonable number of florins for the horse-duty. In less than ten minutes I had worked myself into a rage—a foolish thing to do with the thermometer at 96° in the shade; but H—— was provokingly calm, which irritated me still more. There is an old French verse which, rendered into English, says—
"Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived;
But what torments of pain you endured
From evils that never arrived!"
Now, a little patience would have saved me a useless ebullition of temper. While I was still at white-heat up came the head official; removing the cigar from his lips with Oriental dignity and deliberation, he calmly answered my question, and having paid the money we went our way.
Our design was now to get to Weisskirchen, and sleep there, that place being the only decent quarters within reach. Our road was over the mountains—a lonely pass of ill repute. Several persons had been stopped and robbed in these parts quite recently. The Government had formerly a small guardhouse at the top of the pass; but it has been deserted since 1867, when the district ceased to be maintained as the Military Frontier. Since that time crime has been very much on the increase all along the border-country. The lawlessness that is rampant at the extremities of the kingdom shows a weakness in the Central Government which is very reprehensible. But for this laxity on the borders, the recent Szeckler conspiracy for making a raid on the Russian railway could never have been projected.
We arrived all right at Weisskirchen, which was good-luck considering the chances of an upset in the darkness, for night had overtaken us long before our drive was half over. Thoroughly tired, we were glad enough to draw up in the innyard, the same I had visited some weeks before; but great was our disgust at being told that there was not a bed to be had—every room was taken. We drove on to inn No. 2, where they had beds but no supper. We were nearly starving, for we had had nothing to eat since the morning, so back we had to go to No. 1 to procure supper. When this important meal was finished, we had to make the return journey once more. The streets were perfectly dark, and it was an affair of no small difficulty to find our way. It happened to me that I stepped into something soft and bumpy. I could not conceive what it was. I made a long step forward, thinking to clear the obstacle, but I only stumbled into another soft and bumpy thing. Was it a flock of sheep lying packed together? The skins of the sheep were there, it is true, but as covering for the forms of prostrate Wallacks. A lot of these fellows, wrapped in their cloaks, were sleeping huddled together at the side of the street. I found afterwards that this is a common practice with these people. The wonderful bunda is a cloak by day and a house by night.