In Hungary with Tent and Canoe

by Algernon Blackwood

It was a steaming hot day in August when our Canadian canoe slid up alongside the wharf of a Danube Rowing Club in Buda-Pesth, and we got out to stretch our legs and look about for a hotel. This was not easy, because of our savage and unkempt appearance, and our microscopic amount of luggage.

Six weeks before, we had launched the canoe at the source of the Danube, in the Black Forest, nearly a thousand miles away, and had been travelling in her ever since, sleeping at night in a gipsy tent on the shore or on the islands in the river, wherever we happened to be towards sunset; cooking our own meals, fishing, bathing, upsetting, shooting rapids, taking photographs, exploring quaint villages, and wandering inland wherever attraction offered.

In a word, we had been thoroughly enjoying the ever-changing scenery of the countries we had passed through⁠—as the Danube rolled on, growing every day wider, swifter, and deeper⁠—Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria, Austria and Hungary.

As may be imagined, therefore, our connection with the proverbial bandbox was not discernible at first sight by the time we reached Buda-Pesth, for the sun had tanned us a deep red-brown, and the Danube mud had not failed to add the finishing touches of its more delicate tints.

We had a suit of flannel for work, and a suit of cloth, plus a celluloid collar each, for the towns, the size of the canoe⁠—after tent, blankets, and cooking apparatus were in⁠—making further wardrobe impossible. So that, when we tied up at the first little wharf we came to on the right bank and searched the heights of Pesth on one side and the streets of Buda on the other, for a hotel, we did so with no exuberant confidence in the nature of our reception.

Then, as we stood trespassing on the floating wharf, a man came lazily out of the boat-house into the fierce sunshine and prepared to lower an outrigger into the current. He was dressed in rowing things, and, after a momentary inspection (its brevity, we thought, did him infinite credit), raised his cap to us, and made a polite little bow. We at once hastened to explain our position to him in German and, to our delight, the gentleman replied with the greatest courtesy in excellent English.

“If you will allow us to take care of your canoe for you during your stay in our city, we shall be very pleased; and if you will come tonight to our club dinner and meet the directors, I have no doubt they will invite you to make the Club your hotel.” And here was sounded the note of that delightful Hungarian hospitality which never ceased to ring in our ears, from morning till night, so long as we were sojourners in the land of the Magyars.

It was the Hunnia Rowing Club to which our good angel had directed us, and we were at once made to feel as specially privileged Hunnia members. They housed, mended, and varnished our battered canoe; they dined us and lunched us; they showed us the town in all its aspects, the views from the heights and from the bridges, the things worth seeing in the galleries and churches and other places too picturesque to mention; they introduced us to the national dishes in queer little out-of-the-way restaurants, undiscoverable by strangers, and led us in the cool of the evening to the pleasant groves of St. Margaret’s Isle, where gipsy bands discoursed Hungarian music, with ravishing effect, into the sma’ wee hours. And the night before we left, a crew of eight took us in a racing shell at midnight, with the swirling current, under the four bridges, and then carried us more slowly up stream again, while the moon rose behind the hundred towers of the Parliament buildings, and shed a silver mist over the hurrying river and the sleeping city on the heights above. It was a memorable occasion, as the historians say.

But even Buda-Pesth became wearisome after a time. Our tent had been patched up and our cooking pots secured, and one day we left the friendly rowing club behind us and took the train inland to the Platten See, whither the mended canoe had preceded us by freight.

The Hungarian name for this lake is Balatontó (tó meaning lake), and many of the villages along its shores have Balaton for a prefix. It is a curious body of water, fifty miles long, from two to five miles wide, with warm yellowish waves, and nowhere over thirty feet deep. It has no islands. The south shore is flat, hot, and sandy, but the line on the northern side is diversified with deep bays and bold promontories, and the mountains rise pieturesquely to a considerable height. Their volcanic origin is plainly seen in the truncated coves which rise here and there in a series of vigorous landmarks. Vineyards cover their lower slopes, and dotted about everywhere are the little country estates and summer villas of the rich folk from Buda-Pesth and Agram.

The natives told us the lake was “extremely dangerous,” but the natives were imaginative and musical and altogether charming⁠—though poor boatmen. They had never set eyes on a canoe, and small rowboats were unknown on the lake. Some of the well-to-do visitors had sailing craft of various sorts, and at the wharves of the hotels there were usually moored a few canoes of the Rob Roy description (called Sandolin), in which, on perfectly calm days, the braver spirits paddled delicately about behind piers and breakwaters. But the latter had a bad name, and the sudden winds were proverbial⁠—as, indeed, they seem to be on every lake in the world⁠—and the majority of visitors and natives were completely hypnotised into staying on shore.

At Balaton Földvar, where we left the train, we found our canoe lying on the platform in the blazing sunshine surrounded by a curious crowd, and the moment we came up to carry her down to the shore the warnings broke out afresh, in three or four languages at once, and with as little warning as the alleged windstorms.

We had intended to start across the lake at once, but as a matter of fact it took us exactly six hours to get away. We had dressed in “camping kit” in the hope that the good people would be afraid to have anything to do with us. But no; apparently it only added to the bait. The Rowing Club had written to their friends. There had been articles about us in the papers; and the canoe, lying on the platform for two days, had roused infinite curiosity. So, with the best intentions in the world, our escape was delayed.

A sort of deputation escorted us to the village store and helped us purchase eggs, matches, oil, bread and vegetables, adding up the little bill in kreuzers and gulden lest we should be cheated; taking our names and addresses at the Post-Office in case letters came; and finally inviting us to lunch in the club and tea in the hotel. And in our threadbare and dirty camping clothes we trudged about all day in the heat, mildly expostulating but completely hypnotised into submission by the violence of the language and the energy and number of the deputation.

An hour before sunset, however, our patience became exhausted. A strong wind was blowing from the west, and the lake was rough, but even the risk of drowning seemed nothing to this endless smiling and bowing and saving “Thank you” in several languages with the thermometer at 100° in the shade.

“But now it is impossible,” they declared. “You cannot go tonight. No boat can live in that sea! Sleep here and go on tomorrow.” But this time we looked our friends straight in the eye, and said “No,” “Nein,” “Non,” “Nem,” “Nines,” and every other negative we could invent, and began to load the canoe.

“You will beyond all doubt presently come into the water like corpses,” said one of the prettiest girls, who had decided linguistic talent. But even that failed to move us and fifteen minutes later we were dancing over the waves half a mile from shore, and the kind and anxious crowd on the shore, with telescopes at their eyes, were doubtless discussing the best means of recovering our bodies and the cheapest way in hot weather of sending them home to England!

We reached the other side at length in safety, and put up our tent at the foot of the hills in the shade of some acacia-trees. A great herd of buffalo came down at sunset to drink, standing in the water up to their muzzles with a forest of branching horns rising oddly above the waves. We found the water took a lot of filtering, but when supper was ready it was a peaceful camp, and as we sat chatting round the fire later we saw the lights of Földvar shining across the lake at us out of the blue and purple shadows⁠—all the more friendly for being at the other end of four or five miles.

The whole region is of volcanic origin, and it is said that sometimes on the calmest days the still waters of the lake suddenly become troubled, and great rolling waves appear, and the water boils and foams in a way that can only be explained by volcanic eruptions in the bed of the lake; but during our stay of several weeks we could find no corroboration of these stories. The volcanic energy which raised up the craters and mountains on the northern shore has retreated into the interior of the earth, From the odd-looking truncated cones behind Badascony the fires have long since ceased to leap forth. Volcanically the region is dead, and the only symptoms of ancient fires and eruptions that now remain are the warm sulphurous springs to be found everywhere in the neighbourhood, and which probably are also scattered over the bed of the lake itself.

Above our camp loomed the great promontory of Tihany, an extinct crater. Bare rocky hills rose up behind the narrow fringe of trees beneath which we pitched our tent, and from their summit the old monastery of Tihany overlooks the greater part of the lake. There was no farmhouse where we could get milk or eggs. Wood was scarce, for the belt of trees held only small acacias with vicious thorns, and very little “dead stuff” on the ground. The heat was intense, and the water was so warm that bathing afforded little relief. Storks and cranes had this part of the shore mostly to themselves, except just about sunset time, when a herd of buffalo and oxen came down over the steep hills to stand up to their necks in the water. We got some good photographs of these creatures, often in herds of several hundred, with only their noses and eyes and humps showing above water, and a sea of sharp curved horns all round. Buffalo milk, when we could get it, was excellent.

The lake runs east and west. The northern shore, as said, is mountainous and very pretty⁠—villages every few miles, and between them vineyards coming down to the water’s edge. In some places, for many miles at a time, immense beds of reeds, ten feet and twelve feet high, line the shore to a depth of several hundred yards. Landing is quite impossible. Even if landing can be effected, and hard dry ground found for the tent, there is still no decent water to drink and no clear space to bathe in. More than once we were obliged to continue paddling for hours longer than we wished owing to these endless and impenetrable reed-beds.

After leaving Tihany we went eastwards down the lake and, just a little distance before the village of Réfülop, came to a camping-place, where we stayed for about a week. It is quite the best spot for a permanent camp on the whole lake. There is wood galore⁠—small oak, pollard, and thorn trees. We found a shady place for the tent und a sandy bay for the canoe. Not a quarter of a mile behind our camp, through the pleasant shady woods, was a farm, where we got milk and eggs and bread as often as we required them. Moreover, the farm had a well of cold clear water, and the pail into which our cooking-pots fitted (one inside the other) just held enough to last us through the day. In the end this proved to be less trouble than filtering the insipid and warm lake water three times a day. In the village itself was a capital little inn where we could get a meal when weary of cooking for ourselves. Food was cheap and good; and, to add to the attractions, a Hungarian band of genuine gipsies played the wild national music all the evening beneath the acacia trees.

Réfülop, however, proved to have one serious drawback, if the daily invasion of our privacy, owing to an article about us in the Buda-Pesth papers, can properly be laid to its charge. This article, and the fact that we stayed in this particular camp long enough to attract attention and get ourselves known, unfortunately combined to advertise us, and we had the pleasure (?) of receiving visitors at all hours. They were mostly women. They came in parties of three and upwards. Some spoke German and some English, but they all said the same thing: “We have read about you in the paper, and we are immensely interested to see how you live, and how you cook, and how you sleep, and how you manage that wonderful little boat. Also we want to welcome you to our beautiful country, and to ask if there is anything in the world we can do for you. But most of all we want to know why you take the trouble to come such a long, long way to see our lake, and why you sleep in a tent when there are hotels in all the villages?”

In the end this sort of thing became very wearisome. We were never safe for an hour at a time. The good people all invited us to their villas, and gave us to eat of their delicious national dishes and to drink of their famous wines, but they could not for the life of them understand what we wanted there and what pleasure we found travelling in our rickety canoe and camping out when there were beds everywhere waiting to receive us.

Evidently our explanations were not wholly satisfactory, for the stories that soon circulated concerning us were very far removed from the simple truth. One was that we were both in love with the same Hungarian girl, and neither of us would consent to leave; another was that we intended to purchase a large vineyard, and were come to spy out the land; while a third had it that we meant to buy land and build a house on the shore of the lake, and had already “telegraphed to England for a steam yacht.”

A card of invitation from a friend in Buda-Pesth to a musical bachelor who lived all the summer among his vineyards proved a great pleasure. We trudged up the hot dusty roads and at length found his cottage buried among the vines. But sounds of music and dancing came from within, and he was evidently not the solitary hermit we had been led to expect. Covered with dust and with a strong flavour of camp about us, we were not prepared to face a party. Moreover, one of us carried a huge paper parcel from which carrots and onions (for the pot!) projected out all angles, and the other dangled a milk-can to be filled on the way home for supper.

So we hesitated⁠—and were lost. For while we stood listening to the music and wondering what to do, a girl came out on to the verandah and saw us. After a moment’s amazed inspection she burst into a merry laugh and ran in again. The milk-can and the vegetable parcel seemed just then as big as the cottage itself; it was impossible to hide them. A moment later all the others came out flushed with merriment, and in a moment the white-haired old bachelor introduced himself in English and said he had been expecting us.

We were taken in and dusted first! Then a little déjeuner was prepared for us and we had to taste our host’s excellent wines. Our milk-can was filled, our vegetables packed up neatly; and then we were shown some Hungarian dancing that I shall never forget. For our host had been a pupil of Liszt’s, and to his impassioned playing the young people danced and danced till they could not dance any more. It was real csárdás dancing, full of barbaric grace and wild swift movement. And when it was over and the dancers were resting, the musician seemed to forget everything round him as he passed on to play the folk-songs of his country. One after another they stole forth from beneath his fingers, till the very spirit of Hungary seemed to rise up from the earth and air, from the mountains behind the cottage and the blue lake far below, and to stand before us. All the faces grew mournful and earnest as he played, and sometimes a voice joined in to emphasise the penetrating sadness of a phrase, or to mark some change in the weird rhythm.

From the musical bachelor we passed on down the lake to Badascony, where another charming family named Latskovitz entertained us royally. The hospitality of these Hungarians passes belief. Nothing seems too good for one of the nation that welcomed Kossuth. It is impossible to spend a single krenzer, and the want of proper apparel was never once felt. We looked like brigands, yet felt like princes, and the tact and kindness that can accomplish this are to be found only in communities where the spirit of snobbery is unknown⁠—not, alas! in our own beloved England.

These people understood that we preferred a tent to hot bedrooms, and provided us with a private camping-place near their house and vineyards. Their coachman guarded our tent when we were out. They hung their garden trees with lanterns, and gave us of the Hungarian dishes on a round table under a spreading sycamore. We always shook hands immediately on rising from the table, and the conversation was an odd mixture of Hungarian, German, English, and French. But the singing was always in the Magyar tongue, musical, full of life and fire and perfectly adapted to express the subtle spirit of these wonderful songs.

After leaving Badascony we cruised about for a few days and then met our friends again at Kezthély, which lies at the extreme northwest end of the lake. And here an amusing adventure befel us.

It was difficult to leave our friends in proper time, and the sun was rather near the horizon when we paddled away, intending to camp at the first place that might present itself in the next few miles.

Pitching the tent and cooking after dark is a sorry game, but the sun went down and no openings in the great reed-beds appeared. The shore was everywhere treeless and swampy⁠—no dry square yard on which a tent could stand or a decent bed be made. The darkness settled down over the lake and the lights of Kezthély were far, far away, but still the reeds presented an impenetrable wall. The stars came out and were mirrored all round us, but no opening came out in the reeds. Dozens of bays, that looked in the gloom as if they might lead to shore, proved vain, took us in and out, frightening ducks by the dozen and all sorts of other waterfowl as well. Luckily, the lake was like glass and the night clear and fine, but it was a long and tiresome piece of work.

At last, about ten o’clock, we came to a little village on the shore, and just beyond it the reeds came to an end. We pitched our tent by starlight upon a strip of hard sand, separated from the mainland by a space of swamp, marsh, and puddles. There was not a bit of wood to be seen, and the mosquitoes were thick and venomous. But we were so glad of a resting-place at all, and a dry bed into the bargain, that our dinner of milk and bread seemed delicious.

About eleven o’clock, as we were lying on the sand beside the tent, not even the lantern lit, we heard footsteps approaching through the swamp. Presently two figures, apparently boys, came to within a few yards, inspected us curiously, and made off again at a run. “Gipsies,” we heard them say in Hungarian, Our tent being a gipsy tent had misled them evidently, but it was not a pleasant reflection, because gipsies are forbidden by law to live in tents or to travel at all in Hungary. They are compelled to live in houses and have a trade.

Sure enough we had been betrayed. Twenty minutes later we heard more splashing to the accompaniment of excited voices. We lay perfectly still beside the tent, and in another moment a gendarme emerged out of the darkness and outlined his picturesque figure against the stars. His bayonet he held before him as if ready to charge, and his trousers were rolled up over his knees. He wore neither shoes nor stockings. Instantly he began in excited Hungarian; but we could not comprehend a single word he said. German was equally useless, for he knew not a syllable. With the light of many matches he examined the interior of our tent, poking the things about with his bayonet and jabbering all the time as hard as ever he could.

Probably, when he saw that we were not gipsies in spite of the shape of our tent, he came to the conclusion that we meant to fish by night, and made his search on that account. Fishing is strictly forbidden. At last, however, the examination of our small craft satisfied him that we did not intend much damage, for with the aid of the sneaky boy who betrayed us (and whom we felt much inclined to kick into the lake for his pains), he said in appalling German, “Only sleep here tonight, do no harm, and go on again tomorrow,” and took his leave, splashing back again through the swamp.

Our sleep was undisturbed, aad blazing sun in the morning turned the tent into a veritable furnace. We saw that we had camped too close to the village. Another couple of hundred yards and we should never have been seen. Immediately behind us on the mainland we made out the towers of a gentleman’s country house standing in a lovely garden and surrounded by acres of well-kept vineyards. In the bay a little steam yacht floated at anchor. Someone of greater importance than the small local vignerons lived here, and perhaps the zeal of the gendarme was to be explained on this account. And this proved later to be the case.

About eight o’clock two men came splashing through the swamp towards us. With smiles and many apologies they explained that we had camped directly in front of Graf Hanyadi’s house, and that in the darkness the policeman⁠—who was also fish warden had mistaken us for vagabonds. We kept to ourselves the reflection, that in the light the policeman might have formed a yet worse opinion of us, and received the apologies with all the dignity at our command. We made it clear that this bad been the first disagreeable incident that had befallen us since we entered Hungary, The men, who said they were the engineers of the count’s yacht, expressed great contrition, and by way of making up for the annoyance offered to get us fresh milk from the village, and went away for that purpose with our milk-can.

While they were gone Graf Hanyadi himself came down to see us, splashing through the swamp just like the others, and, when we ran out to meet him to save his clothes, held up his hand to prevent us with, “No, no, gentlemen; I come to you.” He was a charming and courtly old gentleman, and was most anxious to do what he could to help us. “You must tell me anything you need and I will send it down from my house. I read about you in the paper yesterday, and my family have been looking out for you all day. Only this morning we saw your tent.”

We took him for a turn in the canoe, a craft he had never seen before, and at last his curiosity got the better of his desire to be of assistance rather than to bother us with questions, and he exclaimed, “But, gentlemen, the paper says that you always kneel in your boat! How is this possible? Your knees must be worn out. Do let me see your knees?”

At length he left us, with many kind wishes. “I shall write to my sons, who are at the farther end of the lake, and tell them to look out for your arrival, and to meet you and supply your wants,” he cried out. And this incident is typical of all our dealings with the Hungarians, from the fisherman and peasant up to the farmers, vignerons, and country gentlefolk. The name of the village where this occurred is Balaton Barény.

The fishing in the Platten See is a snare and a delusion. In the first place it is forbidden, and in the second there is nothing to catch except fogas⁠—a fish peculiar to these waters. A company has the fishing rights over the whole lake, and with immense nets (covering a sweep of a mile and more) catch the fogas, and send them to Buda-Pesth, Vienna, Fiume, Agram, and all the other towns. The fishermen are not allowed to sell or give any fish away, but we managed once or twice to get a few excellent and savoury specimens for our pot, nevertheless.