On the Embankment, which forms a favourite promenade, is a statue of Petöfi, the Hungarian poet best known to the world at large.
Everywhere in Hungary excellent groups and figures of statuary are to be met with, many of them full of spirit and life, and none so bad as many constantly found in England.
The Houses of Parliament include the two chambers and each is in horseshoe shape.
Budapest is very much up to date in every way. There are the three large termini of the main railways, the eastern, western, and southern, besides smaller stations. There is also a “Strangers’ Enquiry Office and Travel Bureau,” which is an invaluable help to any one entering the country for the first time, comparing with the offices of the celebrated Messrs. Cook elsewhere. The most original feature of the town is a talking newspaper, which distributes news by means of the telephone verbally!
Among pleasure-grounds, the Town Park, which is well kept and beautiful with flower-beds, smooth green lawns, and plenty of trees, is a favourite resort, but in spite of its “zoo” it is rivalled by Margaret Island, already mentioned, lying about two miles up the river. The island is now connected by an outstretched arm with Margaret Bridge, itself crossed by electric trams, so that it is very accessible. It is traversed by a horse-tram, and has on it hotels, restaurants, baths, and every kind of attraction. Birches and willows grow freely, and in summer the flowers are really beautiful. It was formerly Crown property and belonged for a long time to the late Archduke Joseph, but since 1908 it has been taken over by the city. The baths on the island are extensive and well built, and are naturally warm. Indeed, Budapest is pre-eminent among cities in the number and variety of her healing springs; those on the Buda side were known to the Romans and much appreciated by the Turks, by whom the two finest, the Imperial and the Rudas, were built. Besides sulphur and hot baths, there are bitter salt baths and, on the Pest side, artesian baths. The water in some of these is of too high a temperature to be used in a natural state and must be cooled. In summer temporary sheds and rafts appear all along the river-side, and the water-loving population resorts to wholesale swimming and bathing. Besides the baths, the healing waters of Budapest are renowned all over the world, chief among them the Hunyadi Janos, so named after one of the greatest Hungarians—a rather doubtful compliment!
The river, which is such an asset to the city in its milder moods, shows sometimes another side. The ice, which accumulates in the winter, is often the cause of much damage, for when it breaks up it comes down in huge blocks, which grind and crash against the piers of the bridges and do an infinity of mischief. Not less terrible are the floods, which in the past have caused inundations, the most fearful of which spelt ruin to the city of Pest. In March of 1838 the river, which was frozen solid to three feet in thickness, began to groan and crack and heave, so that a dyke was thrown up to guard against it. Count Stephen Széchenyi, who was alive at that time, built a barge or sort of little ark, for which he suffered much ridicule. However, during the thirteenth day every citizen was at work strengthening and piling up the dyke, until, at eight in the evening, the river broke forth and, carrying masses of ice on its surface, beat down the dyke and overwhelmed the crowd. The crashing of the ice, the screams of the women and children, the rush of the waters, made up an appalling orchestra, more especially as the whole scene was plunged in darkness. It was a time of horror as awful as the judgment day to those concerned in it! The whole of the next day the river continued to rise, carrying away on its broad flood hundreds of drowned human beings. Those who survived had fled to the highest ground, and as the water reached the foundations of the streets and sapped them, they saw whole rows of buildings totter and reel and fall. The heavy barges and other things carried along by the water dashed into the streets and smashed up what remained standing. There was nothing to eat and many of the miserable wretches were thinly clad and in extreme cold; the fifteenth day was the worst of all, for many died of hunger and exposure, and corpses lay about on what remained of the land as well as floating on the water. The city had literally crumbled to pieces! Those who were in Buda were better off, for they had the hills to climb up, and the flood did not reach them to the same extent; but to convey help across that raging torrent was not a task to be lightly attempted. Count Széchenyi was among the foremost to help others with his ark, and another hero was Baron Nicholas Wesselenyi, who performed prodigies of valour. Those who visit Pest must go to see the bas-relief on the wall of the Franciscan Church commemorating this disastrous epoch. The city rose again on the ruins of its former self, and to-day numbers four or five times as large as it was then.
COTTAGES IN THE ALFÖLD
CHAPTER X
THE DANUBE BELOW BUDAPEST
Almost directly after leaving the city to continue the voyage southward, we find ourselves close to the island of Csepel, very like others passed above, only more so! The Danube seems to have a peculiar facility in dividing itself into two branches, which run almost parallel and rejoin after a longer or shorter course. The islands thus formed are celebrated for the fertility of their alluvial soil and are eagerly taken up by peasant agriculturists.