Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1917-01-20


tive who remarked to me: "Ah, he
who has once taken part at a wild
goose shooting will be a slave of him
foreverl'
Until the brooks and ponds are coy-
cred with ice the sport endures; then,
water no longer procurable, at given
moment, as If by preconcerted signal,
in one immense mass the great birds
spread their wings and are off to the
shores of the Lower Danube.
l suppose that in all lands there is
an innate antagonism between the
jewellers upon the plains and the ma
tives Of the rugged mountain land
witness the distrust, spoken or I'M
spoken, of Celt for Sassenach and Sas-
senach for Celt. But in no other Eu-
ropean country is it so marked as in
Magyarland. Between the Lowlander
Of the great Hungarian plain and the
Highlander of the mountains which
form it's boundary there is a great
gulf fixed, across which the pairs of
dark eyes glare into each other with
contempt unutterable. The Lowlander
calls the mountain land "the crooked
country" and makes no bones about
stating that the ways of it's inhab-
itants are as tortuous as their scenery.
He despises them for the poverty
which wrings a scanty subsistence
from the barren soil and compels them
to live on maize porridge and barley
bread. Above all, he scorns their po-
etical fancies and dreamy legends, for
to him poet and wastrel are synony-
nous terms.
In his turn, the Highlander loathes
the monotony of the plains; to him
the misty blue ridges and snow-capped
peaks, the narrow, pine-clad valleys
and roaring torrents are the ideal
home. He pours contempt upon the
heavy, dull-witted Lowlander, whose
mind, he says, is blank, whose god
is his belly, and whose only joy is to
stuff himself with pork and wheaton
bread! But here the me 'lntaineer
does something less than justice to his
lowland brother, for the greatest of
Hungarian poets, Sander Petofy, he
whose genius is so many-sided that he
has been compared to Burns and By
ron, to Beranger and de Musset, to
Tennyson and Shakespeare, is dwell
er upon the great plain.
Varied Phases Of the Great Plain.
One wonders at what season of the
40 will finn
upon the Hortobagy. VIII they see
1t amid autumn floods, when rain de-
sends in torrents, not for days or for
weeks, but for months at a time
when, speaking of their weather, the
natives say: Here we ought to have
not one. God but two, one who would
let 1t rain and another to make it dry
again? Will they see the wild geese
roaming in countless thousands over
the sodden grassland? Or will the
hosts of our allies come in the depths
of the bitter winter, when the cattle
have been driven. home and silence
reigns over the empty, snow-covered
plain? A silence broken only by that
terrible wind of the Hortobagy, which
howls and screams like a pack of In
sensate demons over the frozen waste.
Or will they come during the months
of May and June, when 1t wears a
mantle Of tenderest green, when the
fragrant breeze, exhilarating as cham
payne, blows softly over carpet Of
fairest blossom whose kaleidoscope
coloring extends as far as the eye can
reach?, Or will it be when the pitiless
sun beats down from sky Of brass
upon parched and gasping land,
when the Fata Morgana, the mirage
more wonderful here than on the great
Sahara itself, will show them sheets
of ripping water where, a moment be-
fore, was sun-baked plain; will show
them shady woods and nesting vii
lagos and slender church spires and
cattle standing knee-deep pin cool, dark
pools? t1,'s 'iN'''
Autumn, winter, spring, summer
which season will see the coming, of
the deliyerer? For to the Transylvan-
ian fettered to the Magyar, to the
Magyar bound with chains of iron to
the Austrian, he will be a deliverer
though bearing the outward semblance
of an invader. When will the .deliv-
erer. march in his millions across the
Great Hungarian plain?
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