From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young PeopleHedin, Sven Anders
General
From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People
Hedin, Sven Anders
Geography -- Juvenile literature; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature
Cattle-raising has always been an important occupation in Hungary. The
breed of cows, oxen, and buffaloes is continually being improved by
judicious selection, and all kinds of sheep, goats, and pigs are kept in
great numbers, while the rearing of fowls, bee-keeping, the production
of silk from silkworms, and the fishing industry are also highly
developed. To the nomads, who wander from one locality to another with
their herds, horses are necessary, and it is therefore quite natural
that Hungary should be rich in horses--splendid animals of mixed Tatar
and Arabian blood.
This country, where all wealth grows and thrives, and where the land,
well and uniformly watered, contributes in such a high degree to the
well-being of man, is flat and monotonous when viewed from the train. We
see herds with their mounted herdsmen, we see villages, roads and
cottages, but these do not give us any very clear conception of the
country. Therefore it is advisable to spend a few hours in the
agricultural exhibition at Budapest, where we can see the most
attractive models illustrating Hungarian rural life, from pastures and
farmyards to churned butter and manufactured cheeses, from the silk-worm
in the chrysalis to the valuable silken web. We can see the life of
farmers in the country homesteads, in simple reed huts or tents, the
various crops they grow on their fields, the yellow honeycombs taken
from the hives in autumn, tanned leather and the straps, saddles, and
trunks that are made of it. We can see the weapons, implements, and
spoil of the Hungarian hunter and fisherman, and when we come out of the
last room we realise that this country is wisely and affectionately
nursed by its people, and therefore gives profit and prosperity in
exchange.
With unabated speed the train rushes on over the plain, and at length
rattles across a bridge over the Danube into Belgrade, the capital of
Servia. Here we bid good-bye to the Danube and follow the Morava valley
upwards. The Servian villages of low white houses, with pyramidal roofs
of tiles or thatch, are very pretty and picturesquely built; and above
them, green heights, wooded slopes, flocks and herds, and peasants in
bright-coloured motley clothes following the plough. Small murmuring
brooks dance in merry leaps down to the Morava, and the Morava itself
flows to the Danube. We are still in the drainage basin of this river,
and, when we have crossed the whole of Servia, passed over a flat
mountain ridge and left Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, behind us and
have come to another stream, even this is one of the affluents of the
Danube.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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