Buda (Ofen) on the right bank, is the oldest part of the great city. It was near here that the only Roman legion stationed in the province of Lower Pannonia had its headquarters; the ancient place as revealed by excavation may be visited, and a small museum of relics seen at Aquincum, a short distance to the north of O-Buda (Alt-Ofen). But of the Roman times there is little to be learnt. Hungarian history may be said to begin with the conquests of Arpád, who in battle overcame the various princes then occupying different tracts of the territory--all but Zalán, prince of the long strip of country between the Danube and the Tisza, which includes Pest. What Arpád could not take by force he captured by a trick, for the story runs that after he had failed to defeat Zalán, he sent him rich presents of horses, camels, and slaves, asking only in return a piece of grass from his country, as he wanted to see if the grass was as green as that in Asia, and some water from the Danube, as he wished to find if it was as sweet as that from the Don. Zalán received the envoys well, accepted the rich gifts, and returned the small acknowledgments requested, only to be told that the grass and the water represented all the land along the Danube, which he accepted in return for his presents. Thus towards the close of the ninth century began the rule of the Arpád dynasty that continued to rule in Hungary for about four hundred years. Except in paintings and sculpture we must not look for any reminders of this distant past in the Budapest of to-day. The church of St. Matthias which was begun in the mid part of the thirteenth century by King Béla IV. contains some ancient tombs, but the remaining links with the Arpáds are few. It was this King Béla, too, who first built a royal palace at Buda, but the present simple and impressive mass of buildings--since much enlarged and restored--only dates from the reign of Maria Theresa. Here is preserved the old Hungarian regalia--the crown of St. Stephen, orb, sceptre, etc.--of the romantic adventures of which we learn something some hundreds of miles further down the Danube, as we near the Rumanian frontier. The regalia, which is preserved with special care, always guarded by soldiers, and not shown to visitors, was used when Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, was crowned King of Hungary in St. Matthias’ church in 1867. After the crowning he carried out on the Eskuter on the Pest bank, the ceremony of waving the sword to the four quarters, and repeating the time-honoured oath which the kings of the country had hitherto sworn at Poszony (Pressburg).