One of the most wonderful and best developed of all these places is Pöstyén situated at the foot of the Lower Carpathians near the Vág. The hot springs of Pöstyén have been known for generations, and are even referred to in the twelfth century. As is often the case they have occasionally shown some vagaries, the mud-source shifting about erratically from time to time on either shore of the river, and after a tremendous inundation in 1730 they disappeared, but not for long, for a few years after the bathing was going on in full swing, and since then the springs have been stationary. They are sulphurous and exceptionally hot, the natural temperature being 140° F. Their upspringing causes an overflow which runs down into the river and shows itself in mighty rolling clouds of steam rising from the surface. The constant flow causes a deposit of silky sulphurous mud, and it is this that makes the fame of Pöstyén. It is a wonderful cure for rheumatism in all its many manifestations, which is borne witness to by a museum filled with the crutches discarded by patients who have recovered the full use of their limbs. The springs are also rich in radium, and radiograph photos have been taken in a dark room by the agency of the mud alone! Besides rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, fractures, sprains, and bone diseases are treated here, and the thermal water is taken internally as well as in the form of baths. The air is dry and the situation sheltered from the north. Many of the hotels are open all the year round, and though the summer season is the principal one the treatment can be carried on at any time. One of the largest and newest of the many hotels is the “Thermia,” which is near the huge Irma bath, itself a revelation of what can be done in this direction. The bath is built right over the springs, and its vast floor, 126 feet in diameter, is of mud. There are corridors and lifts and dressing-rooms enough for an army, and private baths can be had here too. It is one of the latest and most complete buildings of its kind in the world. There is another bath-house too bearing the name of the monarch. The Kur Salon, adjoining the Kur Hotel, contains reading-rooms, music and dining-rooms, besides a beautiful ballroom. There are recreation grounds, a theatre, a fine park with magnificent trees and promenades by the river. Here special home-industry articles of needle-work peculiar to the district are on sale. Boating can be indulged in safely, and there are endless beautiful walks into the hills around. The proprietor of Pöstyén is Count Emmerich Erdody, and he lets the Spa on lease.
At a little known place on the Mátra mountains called Párad, the waters are a combination of iron and alkaline, and also there is a spring of arsenic water which achieves astonishing results in certain cases. So numerous are the springs in these parts that in spite of the up-to-date development of such places as Pöstyén and Tátra Füred, there are many places where the peasants still indulge in primitive baths as the pigs used the pools before Bath was built. Owing to their open-air life and the constant dampness of their clothes the poor people suffer greatly from rheumatism, and while bathing they preserve their bodies from the extreme heat of the pits where the water lies, by lining the sides with branches of trees as was done in the old days at Pöstyén itself.
Far the most intimate picture of homely life among the various peoples of the Carpathians which has yet been written in English, is Mrs. Phillimore’s In the Carpathians, giving an account of a leisurely tour made by herself and her husband with a cart all around the great encircling heights. Poles, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Czechs, Saxons, all passed before them in review, and they even came across the dreaded Wallachs, held up by the Slavs as bogey men. The Wallach is akin to the Roumanian, and proved himself on acquaintance much less formidable than painted.
They started from Zakopane in High Tátra Mountain, and here they picked up the Polish boy, Milak, who went the greater part of the way with them to drive the cart. They slept out for the most part, had a total absence of adventures of any kind, and the chief difficulty was the lack of food. They were on the border line between Hungary and Galicia, crossing into one or the other as the road wended. Bread, bacon, and sausages, honey and fruit, and sometimes cheese and milk, were the staple diet, and oft-times they were thankful to get anything. Many of the villages were extremely poor. They passed through a watering-place at Bardfield, where baths, cafés, restaurants, and large hotels make it exceedingly popular with the German element who take up all the rooms weeks ahead for the season. But for the most part they shunned the frequented resorts and passed only through little-known districts where the people were very poor.
The writer sums up the races she met in this sentence:
Poles and Slovaks we decided were amongst the lovable races of the world; Ruthenians and Jews were to be esteemed but not beloved; while gipsies were too flighty and flippant to be recipient of any responsible emotion. We knew little of Magyars; Wallachs, Szeklers and Roumanians proper, we had yet to meet, and beyond innumerable suggestions that they were “dangerous people” had no knowledge of them.
A ROAD IN THE CARPATHIANS
It is a record of beech woods, and many streams, of quiet bad roads, and wide maize fields, of poor and dusty villages with kindly villagers, who, though curious, were usually innately well-mannered.
After completing the semicircle they returned again to the plain, and here is a striking little description: