hour in the autumn afternoon. It was
very disappointing; but there is so much of mere chance in bear-hunting,
that where one man has the luck to kill four or five in a season,
another may go on for two years following without getting as much as a
shot.

The sportsman will be glad to hear, though the farmer is of quite
another mind, that bears, wolves, and wild-boar are increasing very much
in the Carpathians generally. I have mentioned this fact before, but I
allude to it again because it was everywhere corroborated. On all sides
this increase is attributed to the tax on firearms, which deters the
peasants from keeping them down. They are often too poor to pay for a
shooting licence and the gun-tax.

Toplicza has some warm mineral springs. Warm water seems to be turned on
everywhere in Hungary. One of these springs is situated close to the
river, where a simple kind of bath-house has been constructed. The water
contains iodine. While at Toplicza I heard that somewhere up in the
mountains on the Bukovina side there is a large deposit of sulphur. The
accounts were very vague, but I thought I should like to have a look at
the place. The district was pronounced to be so unsafe, and so many
robbers had appeared on the scene lately, that I thought proper to take
two men with me; one as a guide, for he had been there before, and a
forester armed with a gun.

My friends the Armenians kindly insisted on providing me with everything
necessary in the shape of food; and one day, the weather being fine, I
started at noon on this expedition along with my attendants. We soon got
into the forest again. The size of the trees was almost beyond belief;
but, alas! many of them had been destroyed in the same ruthless manner
that I have so often alluded to in my travels. Here were half-burned
trunks of splendid oak-trees lying rotting on the ground in every
direction, showing clearly that the forest had been fired. The attempt
at a clearing, if that was the object, was utterly abortive; for when
the trees are down a thick undercover grows up, more impervious by far,
and there is less chance of obtaining pasturage than ever, but the
Wallack never reasons upon this. The State reckons the value of its
"forests" at something like 27,000,000 florins, and yet there is no
efficient supervision of this property, which, from the increasing
scarcity of wood in Europe, must become in time more and more valuable.
The mines of Hungary are estimated i