We compromised on a double number of five-kreutzer stamps, the ones in use for local postage, and ornamented our envelopes with effigies of Franz Josef until they looked like the walls of a chromo-dealer’s shop.
CHAPTER IX
TURDY girls, returning from market with veritable Eiffel towers of empty tubs on their backs, strode up the steep banks from the landing as we fled from the enervating luxuries of the inn at Theben and hastened to paddle towards the busy little town of Pressburg, boasting a new railway bridge, as ugly a château as man has ever devised, and as pleasant parks and gardens as ever soldier and nursery-maid chose for their public flirtations. It claims as its chief historical distinction the honor of having crowned within its walls the Hungarian kings since the dynasty was founded. It is a gay little place, with tastefully decorated shop-windows, and signs everywhere in the Hungarian language. In a brief two hours’ paddle we had passed beyond the limit of a distorted dialect of German, and now heard only the soft music of the Magyar speech. No phase of our journeying was more interesting than the experience with this abrupt philological frontier.
Below Pressburg the Danube branches into three sinuous arms, cutting the great low plain into two long irregular islands, little better than swamps for the most part—at least, as far as our horizon extended. The canalization of the river, which practically comes to an end in this territory, makes the channel quite plain, and diverts the flow of water from the tortuous branches where the villages cluster on the muddy banks. On the first day after leaving Pressburg the
PEASANT GIRL, THEBEN
active arguments of hunger persuaded us to explore one of these lagoons in search of an inn, and after a while we came upon a straggling collection of low shingled houses gathered into the semblance of a village by low fences of wattled willow. With a microscopic vocabulary of Hungarian words we succeeded in getting food to satisfy our colossal appetites, and in holding the friendliest relations with the bronzed peasants, who were fast courting oblivion through the medium of strong wine in the Italian-like hostlery. Here we first made acquaintance with Hungarian dust and Danube mud, an intimacy which ripened as we went on, until at last no adjectives would fitly apply to the one or describe the disgusting characteristics of the other. The willow, too, in this first great flat stretch forced itself on our notice, and began to aggravate us with its monotony, turning an otherwise agreeable landscape into a series of object-lessons in simple perspective. But even the willow came to an end here after a while, and for an agreeable change we welcomed