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Updated: June 24, 2025
About forty yards to the left or north-east of us was a small stream, the boundary, it seems, between the Banat and Transylvania. We were provided with two necessaries of life, wood and water, close at hand. The hut, however, was more picturesque than practical, as subsequent events proved. The Wallacks had constructed it by driving two strong posts into the ground about ten yards apart.
The Szekler town of Maros Vásárhely, which was strong enough to keep the Wallacks at bay, was the sanctuary of the noble ladies and children of that part of Transylvania. It was so full of fugitives that the overcrowding was most distressing. A lady, the bearer of an historic name, told me herself that she and seven of her family passed the whole winter in one small room in Maros Yásárhely.
In the last century, in 1784, there was a dreadful outbreak of the Wallacks. Individually they are really not bad fellows so it seemed to me and one hears of fewer murders among them than perhaps in Ireland. The danger exists of leaders arising who may stir up the nationality fever the idea of the great Roumain nation that looms big in their imagination!
The Vienna Government was accused on this occasion of being very tardy in sending troops to quell the insurrection. It was the time when the unpopular reforms of Joseph II. were so ill received by the Magyars, and no good feeling subsisted between Hungary and the Central Government. But the most frightful outbreak of the Wallacks was, as we all know, within living memory.
And what can be done when the Magyar will not hold with the Saxon, and the Saxon cannot away with the Szekler? Are not the ever-increasing Wallacks getting numerically ahead of the rest, while the Southern Slavs threaten the integrity of the empire? Prosperity is the best solvent for disaffection.
The Wallacks lead their lives outside the pale of civilisation; they are without the wants and desires of a settled life. Very naturally the manumission of the serfs in 1848 found them utterly unprepared for their political freedom. Neither by nature or by tradition are they law-respecting; in fact, they are very much the reverse.
It happened to me that I stepped into something soft and bumpy. I could not conceive what it was. I made a long step forward, thinking to clear the obstacle, but I only stumbled into another soft and bumpy thing. Was it a flock of sheep lying packed together? The skins of the sheep were there, it is true, but as covering for the forms of prostrate Wallacks.
If the Wallacks go on destroying the forests in this way, they will end in injuring the value of the place as a health resort; for the efficacy of the perfumed air of the pine-woods is well known, especially for all nervous diseases. The houses are badly built at Borsék, and the arrangements for comfort are very incomplete.
As an instance, an English company who are working coal mines in the neighbourhood of Orsova have been obliged within the last two years to relay their railway from the mines to the Danube no less than three times, in consequence of the Wallacks persistently destroying the permanent way and stealing the rails. Notwithstanding all this the Wallacks are not without their good points.
She added that the gendarmes, who were supposed to keep order in the district, were far too few to be of any real use. She complained bitterly against the Wallacks for firing the forests, and they had become much worse since '48.
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