During my stay at G---- a party was got up for a few days' shooting in
the interior. On this occasion we were to shoot in Baron Beust's
forests, which extend over an area of about forty miles square; as it
may be supposed, the sport is not the easy affair it is in the
well-stocked parks of Bohemia.
There was not snow enough for sledging, so we drove to the rendezvous on
wheels, using the springless carts of the country, the roads being far
too rough for ordinary carriages. Wrapped in our _bundas_, we were proof
against the cold. The wolf-skin collar turned up rises above the head
and forms a capital protection; and very necessary it was on this
occasion, for there was a keen cutting wind the day we started.
I carried a smooth-bore breechloader charged with the largest buck-shot
in one barrel and with a bullet in the other. In Hungary the forests are
usually so thick that one scarcely ever fires at a long range, and heavy
shot at a short distance in a thicket is better than a bullet. After
driving in a break-neck fashion for about two hours we arrived at the
river Bodrog, a tributary of the Theiss. Nearly every winter the country
hereabouts is under water; I remember once seeing it when there was all
the appearance of an extensive inland sea. Sometimes the inundations are
disastrous, but the ordinary flood is an accepted event, and no damage
accrues beyond the prevalence of marsh fever in April and May, when the
water recedes.
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