desire to continue their journey compelled them to reject. The plains lying between this city and Buda, level as the sea, and of amazing natural fertility, but now through the ravages of war deserted and un-*cultivated, presented nothing but one unbroken sheet of snow to the eye; nor, excepting its curious hovels, half above and half below the surface of the earth, forming the summer and winter apartments of the inhabitants, did Buda afford any thing worthy of observation. The scene which stretched itself out before them upon leaving Buda was rude, woody, and solitary, but abounding in game of various kinds, which appeared to be the undisturbed lords of the soil. The peasants of Hungary at that period were scanty and poor, dressed in a coat, cap, and boots of sheepskin, and subsisting entirely upon the wild animals afforded by their plains and woods.
On the 26th they crossed the frozen Danube, pushed on through woods infested by wolves, and arrived in the evening at Essek. Three days more brought them to Peterwaradin, whence, having remained there a few days to refresh themselves after their long journey, they departed for Belgrade. On their way to this city they passed over the fields of Carlowitz, the scene of Prince Eugene's last great victory over the Turks, and beheld scattered around them on all sides the broken fragments of those instruments with which heroes open themselves a path to glory: sculls and carcasses of men, mingled and trodden together with those of the horse and the camel, the noble, patient brutes which are made to participate in their madness.
During their pretty long stay at Belgrade, Lady Mary, whose free and easy disposition admirably adapted her for a traveller, contracted an acquaintance with Achmet Bey, a Turkish effendi, or literary man, whom she understood to be an accomplished Arabic and Persian scholar, and who, delighted with the novelty of the thing, undertook to initiate our
