sovereign that they preferred being their own
defenders, and thus the castle and nine villages were given over to the
town. The Germans who had left their own Rhine country for the sake of
getting away from the robber knights were not anxious for that special
mediaeval institution to accompany them in their flitting, we may be
sure. The democratic character of the laws and customs of the Germans of
Transylvania is a very curious and interesting study; in not a few
instances these people have anticipated by some centuries the liberal
ideas of Western Europe in our own day.

After returning from the visit to my military friends at Rosenau, I was
told I must not omit to make some excursions to the celebrated mineral
watering-places of Transylvania. The chief baths in this locality are
Elopatak and Tusnad. The first named is four hours' drive from
Kronstadt. The waters contain a great deal of protoxide of iron,
stronger even than those of Schwalbach, which they resemble. Tusnad, I
was told, is pleasantly situated on the river Aluta, an excellent stream
for fishing. The post goes daily in eight hours from Kronstadt. The
season is very short, being over in August. Tusnad is said to contain
one hundred springs of different kinds of water. I am not a
water-totaller, so I did not taste all of them when I visited the place
later on; but undoubtedly alum, iodine, and iron do severally impregnate
the various springs.

I remembered reading long ago Dr Daubeny's work on "Volcanoes," in which
he says that Hungary is one of the most remarkable countries in Europe
for the scale on which volcanic operation has taken place. There are, it
is stated, seven well-marked mountain groups of volcanic rocks, and two
of these are in Transylvania. The most interesting in many respects is
the chain of hills separating Szeklerland from Transylvania Proper. It
is within this district that most of the mineral springs are found.

These volcanic rocks are of undoubted Tertiary origin, say the
geologists. The whole range is for the most part composed of various
kinds of trachytic conglomerate. "From the midst of these vast tufaceous
deposits, the tops of the hills, composed of trachyte, a rock which
forms all the loftiest eminences, here and there emerge.... The trachyte
is ordinarily reddish, greyish, or blackish; it mostly contains mica. In
the southern parts, as near Csik Szereda, the trachyte encloses large
masses, sometimes forming even small hill