There is something decidedly refreshing about such frank ovations nowadays, when the lords of creation have become so extremely chary of their precious attentions towards the fair sex. To offer a nosegay to a girl is in some places so fraught with ominous meaning as to be considered equivalent to a marriage proposal, and exquisite young dandies are apt to feel themselves seriously compromised by the gift of a single rose-bud.
Only, the Klausenburg roses have no such treacherous thorns, it seems; and methinks society must surely be healthy in a place where any gentleman may, without laying himself open to the charge of lunacy, wake up a whole street at 3 A.M. by instigating a musical row beneath the window of a young lady acquaintance.
[CHAPTER XLVII.]
JOURNEY FROM HERMANSTADT TO KRONSTADT.
The railway from Hermanstadt to Kronstadt takes us mostly through a rich undulating country, for, leaving the mountains always farther behind us, we near them again only as we approach the end of our journey.
Salzburg, or Vizakna as it is named in Hungarian, renowned for its salt-mines, is the first station on the line on leaving Hermanstadt—a melancholy, barren-looking place, seemingly engendered by Nature in one of her most stagnant moods. A wearisome stretch of sandy hillocks, their outlines broken here and there by unsightly cracks and fissures, is all that meets the eye; not a tree or bush to relieve the monotony of the short stunted grass, where starved-looking daisies, and spiritless, emaciated chamomiles, are all the flowers to be seen. No wonder the great white cattle look moody and dissatisfied, as from the sandy cliff above they sullenly gaze down at their own reflections in the dull green waters of the Tököli Bath. This bath, highly beneficial in cases of acute rheumatism, is nothing more than an old salt-mine dating back to the time of the Romans, and which, through some accident or convulsion of nature, has been flooded. The brine it contains is so strong as to bear up the heaviest bodies and render sinking an impossibility, so that, though of tremendous depth, persons absolutely ignorant of swimming can walk about in it in perfect safety, with head and shoulders well above the surface.
There are various other baths in the place, all somewhat weaker than the Tököli and other salt-mines, which, only worked in winter, yearly furnish some eighty thousand hundred-weight of salt. But the weirdest and gloomiest spot about Salzburg is an old ruined mine, deserted since 1817, and where over three hundred Honved soldiers found their grave in 1849. They fell in battle against the revolutionary Wallachians, and, as the simplest mode of burial, their bodies were thrown down the old shaft, which is over six hundred feet deep and filled with water to about a quarter of its depth.
A magnificent echo can be obtained by firing a gun or pistol down the shaft; but it is dangerous to approach the edge, because of earth-slips, for which reason the place is enclosed by a wire railing. However, neither this danger nor the fear of the three hundred ghosts who may well be supposed to haunt the spot is sufficient to restrain the Roumanians from prowling about the place. On fine moonlight nights—as I was told by the revenue officials, whose guard-house is close by—they will let themselves down by ropes to chip off whole sackfuls of salt. Sometimes they are caught in the act by some wide-awake official, who then threatens to cut the rope and send the culprits to rejoin the Honveds below, till the unfortunate wretches are forced to sue for their lives in deadliest fear.
The prettiest of the Saxon towns we passed on our way to Kronstadt is Schässburg, situated on the banks of the river. Towers and ramparts peep out tantalizingly from luxurious vegetation, making us long to get out and explore the place; particularly inviting is a steep flight of steps leading to an old church at the top of a hill.