Transylvania is completely hemmed in by the South-Eastern Carpathians, besides being cut up by them, and its people are mountaineers, looking with disdain on the dwellers in the level plain. To them life without heights and hollows, and the constant sense of watchful grandeur given by rising peaks, would be tame and colourless. The mountaineer’s muscles are wrought to india-rubber by continual change of action. His spring is as light as that of a roebuck. To look down into the blackness of a crevasse, to see the roaring torrent filled by the last downfall of rain or by the melting of the pure white peaks far above, is an everyday experience with him, as little noticeable as the passing of wheeled vehicles to a townsman. He has to work hard to gain a scanty living, but the fatness of the plains covered with waving cornfields would seem to him suffocating. The roar of the landslide hurtling down the mountain-side in the night and the crack of a falling tree are sounds that cause him no fear; he has been accustomed to them from childhood. Transylvania is a very rich country, though the greater number of its inhabitants are poor. The ores to be found in its mountains are wonderful, quite the richest in Europe, and many people, especially the gipsies, earn a livelihood by desultory washing for gold in the rivers. There are plains bordering the rivers where flocks and herds may be fed. Horses are bred and exported annually in thousands. Salt occurs in large quantities both in solution and sometimes in complete hills. Every one who gets the chance should visit one of the salt mines, some of which have been worked over a thousand years. The salt is so pure that it can be hewed out in great blocks and cubes, and the air is full of the dust which settles down in a fine white powdered frost like the artificial frosting of a Christmas card. Maize, wheat, rye and other cereals are grown in the valleys of Transylvania, also vines, while fruits are abundant. A most interesting land it is, both as to its peoples, its scenery, and its products, and a land that is not half so much known as it deserves. Any one with hardihood enough to explore Transylvania, knapsack on back, in the simplest manner, would be well rewarded for the risks he ran. A Hungarian writer says: Those who travel on Transylvanian soil look with bated breath on the fabulous colouring of the bewitching picture which water, rocks, forest, mountain and valley, Alps gleaming white with snow, present at every step, every phase of beauty being represented, from the idyllic to the awe-inspiring majestic, and with wonder they gaze at the wealth of natural treasures and natural phenomena, some of which are wonderful both as sights and as marvels of the cunning of nature. It is in the Transylvanian Alps that we find the sources of the two mighty rivers of that country, the Maros and the Olt, as well as of the Szamos, the Kukullo, and the Aranyos.