Our route from Debreczin to Szigeth is one of
those recently opened. The railway statistics of Hungary are very
significant of progress. In 1864 only 1903 kilometres were open, whereas
ten years later the figures had risen to 6392 kilometres; and the
extension has been very considerable even subsequently, though
enterprise of every kind received a check in 1873, from which the
country has not yet recovered.
I confess I was very glad to have come in for the days of the iron
horse, for it would be difficult to imagine anything more tiresome than
a drive on ordinary wheels across the vast Hungarian plain. It is so
utterly featureless as to be even without landmarks. Except for the
signs of the heavenly bodies, a man might, in a fit of absence, turn
round and fail to realise whether he was going backwards or forwards.
Right or left, it is all the same monotonous dead level, with scarce an
object on which to rest the eye. Here and there a row of acacia-trees
may be seen marking the boundary of an estate, and near by the sure
indication of a well in the form of a lofty pole balanced transversely;
but even this does not help you, for "grove nods at grove," and what you
have just seen on the right-hand side is sure somehow to be repeated on
the left, so you are all at sea again.
Sometimes a mirage deludes the traveller in the Hungarian plain with the
fair presentment of a lake fringed with forest-trees; but the semblance
fades into nothingness, and he finds himself still in an endless waste,
"without a mark, without a bound.
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