We English must have our say about statistics whenever there is a
wedding or a funeral, and as a fact Buda-Pest comes out very badly in
its death-rate. It is only within the last two or three years that they
have taken to publish the comparative returns of the capital cities of
Europe, and now it appears that Buda-Pest is in the unenviable position
of having on an average the highest death-rate of any European town! By
some this is attributed to the great excess of infant
mortality--consolatory for the grown-up people, as reducing their risk;
but the children, who die like flies before they are twelve months old,
may say with the epitaph in the country churchyard--
"If then we so soon were done for,
What the deuce were we begun for?"
I do not speak as one with authority, but duly-qualified persons tell me
that nursery reform is much needed in Hungary. I know not what it is
they do with the children, only it seems the system is wrong somewhere,
as the bills of mortality clearly testify.
Then, again, the position of Pest is not healthy; it lies low, indeed
some part of the city is built on the old bed of the Danube. The
drainage, however, is very much improved of late years, and the
magnificent river embankments have done much to obviate the malaria
arising from mud-banks.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Skating--Death and funeral of Deak--Deak's policy--Uneasiness about
the rise of the Danube--Great excitement about inundations--The
capital in danger--Night scene on the embankment--Firing the
danger-signal--The great calamity averted.
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