Myself. Perhaps, if you did, the old gentlewoman would hardly be
so ingenuous as the queen. But who are the Hungarians--descendants
of Attila and his people?
The Hungarian shook his head, and gave me to understand that he did
not believe that his nation were the descendants of Attila and his
people, though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same
race. Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a
very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with
positiveness about them; that the people now known as Magyars first
made their appearance in Muscovy in the year 884, under the
leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which, in the Hungarian
language, signifies a dream; his mother, before his birth, having
dreamt that the child with which she was enceinte would be the
father of a long succession of kings, which, in fact, was the case;
that after beating the Russians he entered Hungary, and coming to a
place called Ungvar, from which many people believed that modern
Hungary derived its name, he captured it, and held in it a grand
festival, which lasted four days, at the end of which time he
resigned the leadership of the Magyars to his son Arpad. This
Arpad and his Magyars utterly subdued Pannonia--that is, Hungary
and Transylvania, wresting the government of it from the Sclavonian
tribes who inhabited it, and settling down amongst them as
conquerors! After giving me this information, the Hungarian
exclaimed with much animation,--"A goodly country that which they
had entered on, consisting of a plain surrounded by mountains, some
of which intersect it here and there, with noble rapid rivers, the
grandest of which is the mighty Dunau; a country with tiny
volcanoes, casting up puffs of smoke and steam, and from which hot
springs arise, good for the sick; with many fountains, some of
which are so pleasant to the taste as to be preferred to wine; with
a generous soil which, warmed by a beautiful sun, is able to
produce corn, grapes, and even the Indian weed; in fact, one of the
finest countries in the world, which even a Spaniard would
pronounce to be nearly equal to Spain.
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