The “_gulyás_” tends the big cattle, oxen and bulls, and is naturally a rough fellow, fond of fight and of wild rollicking. He frequently wrestles with enraged bulls that have fled into the swamps, or with the poachers and robbers roaming over the _puszta_. The “_kondás_” is the lowest type of those herdsmen. He is sullen, hard of access, and irascible, and easily turns into a robber. The most brilliant type is the “_csikós_.” He tends the immense herds of horses browsing in the prairies of Hungary. As the violin and the _furulya_ (or sort of piccolo) are the national instruments of the Magyars, so the horse is their national animal. “The Magyar is created for being on horseback” (_lóra termett a magyar_), the Hungarian proverb holds. Peasant or nobleman, all are keen horsemen, and so intense is their love of the horse that, like Arabs, Hungarian poets treat the horse as a poetical character. The _csikós_ is dashing, quick at repartee, an excellent dancer and singer or rather improvisatore, and grown to his horse. He knows every patch of his _puszta_, and every trick and dodge of horse-dealing and—horse-stealing. The girls idolize him. In his fluttering, highly-coloured costume, he is the very martial, bold and provoking youth whom girls will worship. Amidst these types of the _puszta_, none the least fascinating is the “_szegény legény_,” or “poor lad.” He is the robber and brigand of the _puszta_, and the romantic interest attaching to him grows out of the belief that he took to his lawless profession after having been thwarted in life or baffled in love. But of all the phenomena of the _puszta_, the Fata Morgana, or _mirage_, in Hungarian “_déli báb_,” is the most striking. On a sultry afternoon in summer, cities appear in mid-heaven, images of towers and castles, immense lakes and forests. They shine sometimes with a peculiar, supermundane lustre, and the traveller thinks he is walking in fairy-land. Then suddenly they disappear. Such is the _puszta_.