The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎89r] (182/244)

1892
AUSTRIAN ST FARMS
667
judging from those I saw sold at the Buda-Pesth TattersaU's, I should
gay that the average was about the same.- I was fortunate in being
present at these sales after my visit to Mezohegyes, and saw some
excellent hacks, harness horses, and chargers sold at from 500 to 800
florins, some going up as high as 1,600 florins. I can see no reason
why some of these animals should not make hunters, though it is
possible they may not possess inherited powers of jumping; they
certainly have the makes, and shapes, and powers of going and
staying to an extraordinary degree, but an English dealer who was
there grumbled sorely about the Government mark. The auction is
carried on entirely by the Government with a military auctioneer,
who repeats the bidding in both German and the Magyar tongue.
The Minister, Kosmar, standing down in the ring practically controls
the sale, and many a short knock was given when the bidder hap
pened to be an officer. The big ring, round which the horses can
gallop, and the strongly marked Jewish type of the dealers, make
this sale different from any I have seen in our own country; and I
was told that if an Hungarian noble wishes to purchase a horse, even
from his neighbour, he generally employs the omnipresent Jew to
make the bargain.
Eadautz is so totally different to Mezohegyes that it would be
unfair to compare them ; and when, after a slow but interesting—and,
owing to the Zone system, a very cheap—journey through Galicia,
one arrives in Bukovina, among her swarthy black-haired peasants,
with their long hair and sad expressionless faces, and the keen-eyed
cadaverous-looking, orthodox Jews, with their greasy ringlets and
long alpaca garments, it almost seems like another world. In some
respects not a pleasant world, when one is mixed up too closely with
its inhabitants in a crowded railway station, as nowhere have I ex
perienced such pungent garlic, or a smell of which it is so difficult to
rid one's nostrils, as that produced by garlic and ancient sheepskins,
and the other accompaniments of a Eoumanian peasant.
Eadautz itself may be divided into its straggling, irregular town
round the huge market square, with its one business street entirely in
the hands of the Jews, and the Government buildings, including the
hospitable commandant's pretty house and officers' quarters, and the
fine stables and magnificent riding school attached. You may take it
for granted at once that everything in connection with horses is well
done in the most practical and systematic manner, and with its herds
of horses turned out in summer to roam in the Carpathian mountains
at their will for hundreds of miles, with its half-bred Arabian mares
and stallions, with its Huzulen ponies, and with its close proximity
to those glorious Carpathian forests, it is unmatched for situation
and for the production of hardy, untiring horses. The lands which
formerly belonged to the monastery of Sucowitza were taken by the
Austrian Government in 1869, who now pay the monks a monthly