HUNGARIAN GIRLS AT BEZDÁN
During the sermon we hurried away to be present at the close of the church-service in the neighboring village of Bezdán, inhabited by Magyars. It was a few miles away, and we arrived only in time to see the quiet streets enlivened with people totally different in type and dress from those we had just left. In the flickering shadow of the trees, under the noonday sun, the women strode off homeward with an
ERDÖD
energy of action that made their stiff petticoats balloon out still more. Near the church the men gathered in silence to listen to the crier, who was announcing various articles for sale. The unmarried girls of the village wear white linen dresses, with short sleeves and embroidered waists, wreaths of flowers in their hair, bright red ribbons down their backs, black stockings, and dainty red and yellow slippers. The matrons wear colors, sometimes green or black, but usually red, and the men are chiefly noticeable for their loose linen garments and elaborate boots, often with a survival of the spur in the shape of a brass ornament on the side of the heel. Even as we stood watching the people the streets became quite deserted again; and so we hastened on to another village, where, in the populous Servian quarter, we caught our first glimpses of Oriental life in the groups of women sitting flat in the road in the shadow of the houses, disdaining, like true Orientals, all such luxuries as chairs and tables, and disturbed by no horror of dirt. Our Sunday’s excursion also included a gypsy settlement—not a common sight, for these people are seldom permitted to occupy houses. It disagreeably contrasted in its squalor and filth with the perfection of neatness and tidiness among the Schokaczs and Magyars, but gave us a notion of the range of types easily studied in this one neighborhood.
When we left the mouth of the canal, one breezy morning after our excursion, and shot down the turbid stream with all sail set, the soothing regularity of the tree-covered banks, and the utter absence of anything to study or to sketch, was not without a calming influence on us, and but for this little respite we probably should not have had the heart to land at the long straggling village of Apatin, which promised new beauties and fresh interests. Almost the first person we saw was a little old German woman spinning flax on a tiny wheel, looking exactly as if she had been transported bodily from the Black Forest. Farther along the street we met unmistakable Germans, and heard again the familiar language of the upper river. At the nearest corner was a brewery, with tables under the trees, and guzzling sluggards devouring strong sausage and stronger cheese. Everything was of the most commonplace German order, from the architecture of the houses to the beer mugs. Our parachute had burst, and we came to earth with a heavy thump.
About half-way between Apatin and the village of Erdöd, with course as straight as a canal, the river Drave pours in a muddy flood, and far up the shining stream the foot-hills of the Tyrolean Alps lie all faint in the distance. Fertile hills now skirt the west bank, and their sunny yellow slopes looked agreeably bright and warm after the heavy greens of the forest and swamp. The river has washed away the hills into perpendicular bluffs, which are of earth almost as hard as sandstone. Rude steps cut along a cleft were lively with girls carrying jars of Danube water to the village above; and once, under a vineyard, where the vines trail over the very edge of the bank, we saw a rude cave dug in the earth, where a long pole with a dangling bush projecting far
