3 May. Bistritz. —Left Munich at 8:35 P. M, on 1st May, arriving
at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but
train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from
the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could
walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station,
as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as
possible.
The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and
entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the
Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the
traditions of Turkish rule.
We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to
Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I
had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with
red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for
Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika
hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to
get it anywhere along the Carpathians.
I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I
don't know how I should be able to get on without it.
Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had
visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and
maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that
some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some
importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country.
I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the
country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania,
Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains;
one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.
I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact
locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this
country as yet to compare with our own Ordance Survey Maps; but I
found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a
fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, asfairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as
they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with
Mina.
In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct
nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the
Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the
West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the
latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This
may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the
eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it.
I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered
into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of
some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very
interesting. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.)
I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for
I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night
under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it
may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in
my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was
wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must
have been sleeping soundly then.
I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of
maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed
with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata".
(Mem.,get recipe for this also.)
I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before
eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the
station at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour
before we began to move.
It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual
are the trains. What ought they to be in China?
All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was
full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or
castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals;castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals;
sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide
stony margin on each side of them to be subject of great floods. It
takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge
of a river clear.
At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds,
and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the
peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany,
with short jackets, and round hats, and home-made trousers; but
others were very picturesque.
The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they
were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves
of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of
strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a
ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them.
The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more
barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy
dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy
leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass
nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them,
and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very
picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would
be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They
are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in
natural self-assertion.
It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz,
which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the
frontier—for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina—it has had
a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty
years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible
havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the
seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost
13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by
famine and disease.