Round About the Carpathians

he Wallacks in former years-Panslavic ideas-Roumanians and their origin-Priests

, overlaid by Szeklers, Magyars, German immigrants, Wallacks, Rusniacks, Jews, and gipsies. An old Ger

n, for Slavonia furnishes the greatest number of fattened pigs; the German gives potatoes and vegetables; the Italian, rice; the Slovack, milk, cheese, and but

were in old time the overflow of Wallachia, now forming part of the Roumanian Principality. The first historical irruption of the Wallacks was about the end of the fourteenth century, when they became a terrible pest to the German settlers in Transylvania, dreaded by them as much as T

harshness and indignity. It was the old story-good masters were kind to their serfs, but those less fortunate had a ba

emember walking to church on the backs of the peasants, who knelt down in the mud to allow her to pass over them without soiling her shoes. She could also remember, though less partial to the

obles. The Vienna Government was accused on this occasion of being very tardy in sending troops to quell the insurrection. It was the time when

n hear from the lips of witnesses descriptions of horrors committed not thirty years ago in Trans

ry's war of independence. The Vienna Government has been very fond of playing off the Wallacks and the Slavs against t

n of the Slavonic congregation at Pesth, who wished to establish a national literature by circulating all works written in the various Slavonic dialects.... The idea of an intellectual union of all these nations naturally led to that of a political one; and

lavs. "The Roumanians," says Mr Freeman,[7] "speak neither Greek nor Turkish, neither Slave nor Skipetar, but a dialect of Latin, a tongue akin not to any of their ne

Mr. Boner,[8] writing in 1865, calculates that the Roumains, naturalised in Southern Hungary, number 596 out of every 1000 souls in Transylvania. The fecundity of the race is

are now as exclusively Roumain. It is even possible to find churches where the ser

, indeed in some cases 30 florins a-year, it speaks for itself that they belong to the poorest class. The Wallacks lead their lives outside the pale of civilisation; they are without the wants and desires of a settled

Communism, which deals with social theories, but a simple consistent belief that, as they themselves express it, "what God makes grow belongs

nest trees to make a clearing for sheep-pastures. It is impossible to travel twenty miles in the Southern Carpathians witho

systematically: one year the bark is stripped off, the wood dries, and the year after it

rom this reckless waste. There are about twenty-three million acres of forest in Hungary, including almost the only oak-woods left in Europe. The great proportion of the forest-land belongs to the State, hence the supervision is less keen, and the depredations more readily winked at. Riding one day with a Hungarian friend, I asked what would be the probable co

once, but many times probably. Added to this, the Wallack takes an actual pleasure in wanton destruction. As an instance, an English company who are working coal mines in the neighbourhood of Orsova have bee

an amount of natural intelligence which promises better things as the result of education. "Barring his weakness for tobacco and spirits, the muc