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rails to keep off the cows. This original contrivance is the salemlik, or receptionroom, where the master sits, and where he entertains his guests, who, as they stumble into the obscure den from the glare of the sun shining on the snow outside, are received with a yell by all the dogs, who live under the platform. This place is fitted up with divans and carpets; arms and saddles hang against the walls; the horses of the chief are tethered nearest to the rails, the donkeys and cows further off. Among the horses there is always an immense fat tame sheep; this is a universal custom in every stable in Turkey, under or above ground. Among some of the Koordish tribes, a young wild boar is kept in the stable with the horses; a remarkable custom among Mohammedans, who consider the whole race of swine as unclean beasts; this is the only case in which they are tolerated. A small flock of other sheep are sometimes scampering about, or kept from doing so, among the cows; chickens peck in the litter, and several grave cats have their allotted places on the divans of the chief, his wife, and others of his family. A vacant, that is, cowless space is left between the steps leading up to the platform and the entrance door of the house; this part answers to the entrance hall, as man and beast pass through it on coming in or going out, immediately before the eyes of the master of the house. From hence a sloping passage about six feet wide leads to the open air; it has an outer door at the upper end, and an inner door below: this passage may be from ten to twenty feet long. The outer door is a common strong wooden one, but the inner doors all over the house are as singular as the rest of the arrangements. The house door is of the usual size for the cows and horses to pass through, the others are not more than five feet high; they are constructed in the following manner: the bare wooden valve is first covered with ketché or felt, and on the inside the skin of a sheep, with its legs and arms on, just in the shape in which it came off the animal when it was skinned, being dyed red, is nailed over the felt.

On the other side of the door, down the middle, is a long square pipe or box, in which hangs a heavy log of wood attached to a cord fixed to the upper part of the door-case, which keeps the door shut, as it swings to again after it has been

opened, and keeps out the drafts, and keeps in the warm air generated by cows, fires, and lamps, so that the atmosphere is always temperate within, while the cold is such without, that men are frozen to death if they stand still even for a short time in the rigorous climate of an Armenian winter.

HIGH LIFE AND LOW LIFE IN
CENTRAL EUROPE.

HO will write a book upon rivers,

WH

telling us how those great liquid moving highways have contributed to the welfare and the development of mankind; how, in times of peace, they have befriended the nations upon their banks, and in times of war proved their worst enemies? The Danube, the Theiss, the Save, and the Drave are the four great rivers of Hungary, represented, like her four sacred mountains, upon the national flag. Minor streams flow into the broad Danubian outlet, of which the Waag is the most important, furnishing, in its short course, types of the different kinds of scenery in Hungary, and with whose picturesque sites are connected innumerable souvenirs of the past. Rising among the Carpathians, it furnishes the mountaineers means of communication with the inhabitants of the plains. Now the traveler who descends from its source has in view alps covered with eternal snows, and then fresh prairies. Here are towering, rugged rocks, crowned with the ruins of feudal castles; and there, open to the sight beautiful valleys, whose hamlets and villages are hung like pearls on the silvery thread of the river. But as he advances the mountains lower themselves into hills, and these again sink into the bosom of the great plain which stretches away to the Danube.

Near the mouth of the Carpathian gorge, and not far from a fortress built as a defense against the Mogul Tartars, is the pretty village of Szent-Ivány, the crypt of whose church has the singular property of preserving from corruption the bodies deposited within it. Death is there a calm perpetual sleep.

The grottoes of Deménfalva are situated in a neighboring valley. The most celebrated opens half way up a rugged mountain. From the narrow entrance you descend rapidly a considerable distance to a number of elevations, separated from

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each other by deep ravines which it is necessary to cross. Enormous masses of petrefactions in the form of columns seem to support the roof of the main grotto. places the stalactites assume the shape of men and of animals. Now a crouching lion is about to leap upon you; here a scaly crocodile is creeping from the Stygian stream; there frowns a huge giant; and further on you seem to behold winged monsters in hideous, menacing attitudes. Suddenly in one of the dark halls of the grotto you observe the most brilliant reflections of light. The colors of the rainbow are confusedly painted on the dark walls and roof of the cavern: the gleam of the torches is refracted and broken into myriad spangles of light. The phenomenon is caused by a large amount of icea perpetual glacier down in the gloomy depths of the mountain, from which the inhabitants in the vicinity liberally supply themselves in the warm season. It has been observed that there is more ice in the cavern in summer than in winter, a circumstance which has led visitors to suppose that the temperature is then lower than in the cold season of the year. At no time, however, does it vary much from the freezing point. The formation of ice takes place in the latter part of the winter and even advances far into the summer, a

| long time being required to bring the atmosphere of the grotto and that without in a state of partial equilibrium. By contrast the former seems colder in summer and warmer in winter.

Further down the Waag is Isolna, celebrated for having been the rendezvous of the Protestant Hungarians in the seventeenth century. There, in 1610, George Thurzó, palatine of the kingdom and a zealous advocate of the Reformation, convoked a synod at which were present a great number of the national clergy and strangers. The picturesque walls crowning the summit of a high mountain at the west are the remains of the castle of Lictara, the cradle and residence of the Thurzó family. It was erected in the thirteenth century as a refuge from the Tartars.

The valley of Szulyò, which opens into that of the Waag, offers a grand and unique spectacle, the semblance of Cyclopean ruins, as if some Babel or antediluvian city had stood there in those far-off misty ages. The illusion is almost perfect. Here are Druidical temples, with rocks for columns; there are palaces whose doors and windows open into the caverns and grottoes of the mountains. Near by are immense rocky obelisks, destined, apparently, to commemorate some great event; at another point are colossi pre

senting the hideous images of the kings or heroes of a race of giants; and further on you behold the remains of a vast amphitheater, half buried beneath its own ruins. In one part of it you see bas-reliefs, sculptured in the living rock, representing, it would seem, the combats of lions and elephants, or of armed gladiators. At every point you meet some massive and bizarre figure, or the semblance of some picturesque ruin.

Soon after leaving Teplitz the tourist reaches the fortress of Trencsin, an old fortification even more famous that that of Sztrecsen, some distance above. It is situated on a mountain, and the central portion, consisting of a square tower, passes for a Roman structure. The castle incloses a well more than two hundred feet deep, called the Lovers' Well, from the following circumstance: The Count Szapolyai returned from an expedition against the Turks with a rich booty and numerous captives, among whom was the young and beautiful Fatima. Expecting that he would, in turn, be attacked by the Mussulmans, the count made every effort to render the fortress impregnable. The position was strong, but there was no supply of water.

While they were searching for a spring the arrival of a caravan was announced, whose chief had come to treat for the ransom of the prisoners. It was the wealthy Omer, who made the most liberal offers for their release.

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Toil, treasures, vigils, nothing was spared. Three years were passed in laborious excavation, and yet no water. The wealth and the courage of Omer were nearly exhausted. Despair alone seemed his portion, when all at once a little vein of water was discovered at the bottom of the well. The workmen redoubled their efforts, and the fillet of water gradually swelled to a copious fountain. Fatima was restored to Omer, and overjoyed with happiness they returned to their native country.

The Château of Czaithe, almost equaling in boldness of position the fortress of Murány, calls to mind the cruelty of feudal times. It belonged to Elizabeth Báthori, a wicked woman whose vices increased with her age. To avenge herself upon time, which furrowed her face with wrinkles, and upon the world which regarded her with indifference, she exhausted the refinements of cruelty upon her servants.

One day the blood of a victim happened to fall upon Elizabeth's hand. She conceived the strange idea that it rejuvenated the faded skin. From that time she took baths in human blood to restore to her wasted body its former freshness. Aided by two old servants she immolated a great number of victims, as many as three hundred, it is said, for this horrible purpose; when a young man whose affianced had been destroyed, after much effort discovered the cause of the death, and disclosed the circumstances to the palatine, George Thurzo. Elizabeth Báthori was arrested along with her servants. Condemned to imprisonment for life she died in 1614. Her accomplices perished by the hand of the executioner. Only a few years since they showed the subterraneous chambers where these infernal furies were

"Fatima," cried Omer; "she is my accustomed to murder young and beautiaffianced!"

He offered all his gold, his jewels, all his wealth for the ransom of the beautiful captive. But Szapolyai remained inflexible. Omer threw himself at his feet, besought him, conjured him.

"Cause the water to leap from these rocks!" at last exclaimed the count, "and I will restore to you Fatima."

"Thy word of honor ?"

"Here is my hand. Heaven is my witness that I have never yet broken a promise."

Omer set himself at work with his companions and a large number of laborers. %

ful women, and the odious basin which received the blood as it flowed from the veins of the victims.

A short distance from Trancsin is a rocky peak, seven or eight hundred feet in height, whose summit is crowned with the Château of Beczkó. It owes its erection to an eccentric Polish nobleman named Stibor, who became celebrated in the reign of Sigismond. While on a hunting expedition along the Waag his party partook of their dinner in the shade of this mountain peak. At the end of the repast each one expressed a wish.

"I desire," said Stibor, when it came

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his turn, "that a castle may be built upon | nobleman. "One year from this day I inthe summit of this rock, which has protected us so well from the rays of the sun." "Impossible!" they all cried with one

voice.

"Nothing is impossible!" continued the

vite you all to meet me at my chateau upon its summit." Stibor kept his word, and splendid fêtes inaugurated the castle. Temetreny was the seignorial residence of the celebrated Count Bercsényi, the gen

eral-in-chief of Rákóczi. After the defeat of Romboy, in June 1710, which decided the fate of the Hungarian insurrection, the count returned to his castle, but the imperial troops putting themselves in pursuit, he one day received a note from a friendly hand urging him to betake himself to the mountains without delay as the only means of safety. As Bercsényi could not hasten, on account of a dangerous wound he had received from the Austrians, it was necessary to retard the operations of the enemy before the castle. Orders were given for its defense. It was announced to the few soldiers that their master would yield only at the last extremity. At night the count escaped by a secret path to the mountains. The imperialists presented themselves before the castle, and summoned the little garrison to surrender. The commander, a faithful French servant, speaking in the name of the count, demanded three days for consideration. This condition was accepted. The time expired, the Austrians entered the castle, arrested the Frenchman, whom they mistook for Bercsényi himself, and carried him to Posonia. In the mean time the count, with great effort, had succeeded in reaching the Polish frontier. He had

hardly set foot on the friendly soil when a voice from the thick underbrush cried, "Hold! Are you not Count Bercsényi?"

He did not attempt to disguise the truth, and supposed himself lost. In a moment he was surrounded by armed men who recognized him. One of them approached respectfully and said: " My general, you have nothing to fear. We are the remnant of your army exercising, since our defeat, the trade of honest brigands. Rest yourself in our asylum, and we will then escort you to a place of safety."

The count gladly accepted their offer, spent the night in the mysterious dwelling of the brigands, and was the next day escorted in the direction of Vaesoria.

In connection with the chateau of Count Bercsényi I have alluded to Francis Rákóczi, the author of the Marseillaise of Hungary. He was yet boy, pursuing his studies under Jesuit teachers, although himself a Protestant, when Kara Mustapha for the last time pitched the green tents of the Moslems before the walls of Vienna; when Eugene of Savoy, the Duke of Lorraine, and Maximilian of Bavaria, by prodigies of valor, expelled the turbaned hordes from the soil of Hungary. The astute policy of the Hapsburgs was then directed

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