At all events, in my own case, in this year 1878, I no sooner diverged from the beaten track than I had experience of the fact that there was still an unexplored world within the confines of Europe. The long journey down the Danube in a steamboat, now superseded by the railway, formed in itself an expedition of no common interest. It happened that my friend and I had to leave the steamer at Mohacs, famous in history, and in the pages of Thackeray, in order to visit the vast estates of the Archduke Albrecht, at that time the richest member of the Imperial family. It was then that I had the first experience of a genuine Hungarian town, with its streets knee-deep in mud, and swarming with huge dogs of ferocious temper. On quitting the steamboat for the inn, I seemed at one step to have passed from civilisation into savagery. Anything more atrociously filthy and repulsive than this establishment I never saw, and yet it was the best inn of a town of thirty thousand inhabitants. When we reached our destination--a castle of the Archduke's--the next day, we found ourselves once more surrounded with the comforts and decencies of civilised life, but there were many evidences of the fact that we were here far from the world. The game of croquet, for example, had been for some ten years before this time practically extinct in England. At the Archduke's castle they seemed just to have heard of it, and were eagerly learning it when we arrived. At one of the outlying farms on the splendid estate, the manager, like all his colleagues, was of noble birth. When he found that we were Englishmen he suddenly disappeared from the room. In a few minutes he returned with a smiling and handsome young lady on his arm. "My wife speaks English," he declared, in accents of pride. It turned out that the lady, who had been educated at Budapest, had never spoken to any Englishman before. We seemed to be almost the first who had ever penetrated into that unknown land. When the husband found that his wife was able to converse with us he literally danced for joy, and invited all the rest of the company to witness the wonderful spectacle. The hospitality and friendliness of the Hungarians were delightful. However unpopular Englishmen might be elsewhere in Europe, at that time they were certainly loved in Hungary, and the mere fact of his nationality was sufficient to secure for the English traveller an unstinted hospitality.