As I mentioned before, a railway is projected from Kronstadt through this pass, which will meet the Lemberg and Bucharest line at Ployesti, that station being less than two hours from the Roumanian capital.  Up to the present hour not a sod of this railway has been turned; but curiously enough, with only two or three exceptions, all the “war maps” have made the capital mistake of marking it down as a completed line.  In the autumn of 1875, when I was there, the levels had been taken and the course marked down; if it is ever really carried out, it will be one of the most beautiful railway drives in Europe.  It is a most important link in the railway system of Eastern Europe.  The Danube route is frequently, indeed periodically, closed by the winter’s ice, and sometimes by the drought of summer, in which case the traveller who wants to get to Roumania must take the train from Buda-Pest to Kronstadt, and thence by road through the Tomoescher Pass to Ployesti.

There is a diligence service twice daily, occupying fourteen hours or thereabouts, dependent, of course, on the state of the roads, which can be very bad—­inconceivably bad.  For the sake of the excursion I took a place in the postwagen one day as far as Sinia, where there is a modern hotel and very tolerable quarters.  The scenery of the pass is very romantic.  In places the road winds round the face of the precipice, and far below is a deep sunless glen, through which the mountain torrent rushes noisily over its rocky bed; at other times you skirt the stream with its green margin of meadow—­a pastoral oasis amidst the wild grandeur of bare limestone peaks and snowy summits.  The autumnal colouring on the hanging woods of oak and beech was something more brilliant than I ever remember to have seen; the effect of being oneself in shadow and seeing the glory of the sunlight on the foliage of the other side of the defile, was most striking.  Above this ruby mountain rose other heights with a girdle of dark fir, and higher still were visible yet loftier peaks, clothed in the dazzling whiteness of fresh-fallen snow.  In the Southern Carpathians there is no region of perpetual snow, but the higher summits are generally snow-clad late in the spring and very early in the autumn.  I was told there is good bear-hunting in this district.

While at Kronstadt I made the acquaintance of some Austrian officers quartered in the neighbourhood.  They kindly invited me to the cavalry barracks at Rosenau, and accordingly I went over for a few days.  The barracks were built by the people of the village, or rather small town, of Rosenau; for they were obliged by law to quarter the military, and to avoid the inconvenience of having soldiers billeted upon them they constructed a suitable building.  The cavalry horses were nearly all in a bad plight when I was there, for they had an epidemic of influenza amongst them; but we found a couple of nags to scramble about with, and made