Almost directly after leaving the city to continue the voyage southward, we find ourselves close to the island of Csepel, very like others passed above, only more so! The Danube seems to have a peculiar facility in dividing itself into two branches, which run almost parallel and rejoin after a longer or shorter course. The islands thus formed are celebrated for the fertility of their alluvial soil and are eagerly taken up by peasant agriculturists. Csepel is a strip of 38 miles or so with an average breadth of 3 miles, on each side of which the arms of the divided river run almost straight. There are at least a dozen villages planted along the island and some 20,000 inhabitants live there. Apart from this curious feature of the landscape, any one who has come down from the higher reaches of the Danube may feel disappointed at the scenery; he has had his fill of variety and grandeur, of precipitous rocks and sudden turns, and he finds himself instead in the midst of flat land bounded only on the far horizon by hills. The great stillness, the monotony, the evidences of the simple agricultural life of the dwellers in the plain, all contrast with the rush of rapids, the endless change of scene and the suggestions of war and brigandage presented by the stern ruins of the keeps perched defiantly on their high bosses. Nevertheless, in the plain is to be found the true Hungarian life and glimpses of the peasantry. The Hungarian is not a mountain-man like the Transylvanian or Tyrolese. In the long-gone ages it was the boundless plain which tempted his forefathers to settle here, and at the present time it is the boundless plain which holds his heart in captivity. The great soda lakes lying flat like mirages are deserted by birds in the winter but become the resting-place of numerous flights of geese in spring and autumn. The little villages are half-buried in vineyards and show only the steeple of a church or the white walls of the tiny houses. Great water-mills float placidly everywhere, even though their numbers have been reduced by the adoption of steam. The vast reaches of cultivated land looking rich in the sunlight are varied by the flocks of sheep being watered at a primitive trough and well; just so did Jacob water the flocks when he met Rachel. The immediate banks of the river are mostly sand-hills and reeds, fringed by straggling willows which give scanty shade, and the bed of the stream, ever varying in depth, needs careful navigation. Kalocsa is the seat of an archbishop, and contains a famous college and an astronomical institute in which observations of value and importance to the whole world have been made. A branch line joins this town with Kiskaros, the birthplace of Alexander Petöfi.