2 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



thaw. Unfortunately, in February a marked and, 

 for the time of the year, very unusual rise in the 

 temperature took place, accompanied by torrents of 

 rain. The whole eastern bend of the Carpathian 

 horseshoe, which is in fact the watershed of the 

 Theiss and its tributaries, poured down its thousand 

 streams into the great Hungarian plain ; and fears 

 were entertained of inundations as serious as those 

 in the spring of 1876, when the capital itself was 

 threatened by the rise of the Danube. 



During a residence of five years in Hungary, I have 

 had some notable experiences of storms and floods. 

 The first phenomenon of the kind which I witnessed 

 was the remarkable storm of the 26th of June 1875. 

 On that occasion a waterspout burst on the mountains 

 behind Buda, and together with wind and hail de- 

 stroyed a considerable amount of property in the town 

 and neighbourhood, causing also the death of nearly 

 sixty people. The fury of this storm was far exceeded 

 by the catastrophe which occurred on the last night of 

 August 1878, at Miskolcz and Erlau, in the north-east 

 of Hungary. 



Buda-Pesth has experienced no less than fourteen 

 inundations in this century; the most disastrous being 

 that of 1838, which destroyed some four thousand 

 houses and caused great loss of life. Of some inci- 

 dents in the alarming inundation of 1876 I will speak 

 later, merely observing here, that though the worst 

 was averted, and the capital escaped almost by a 



