associations whatever with Curt d'Argis and
Kimpolongo? Let us try to connect a few
images, a few forms, a few colours, with these
words. This is the best way to extend our
sympathies in that direction.

Moldo-Wallachia is little more than a huge
farm, giving employment to some three or
four millions of labourers. It is not, however,
a farm laid out on the principles of Mr. Mechi,
but an eastern backwoods farm, very vast
and straggling; here and there cut up by
patches of original desert and extents of
primitive forests, made rugged by spurs of
mountains and watered by boisterous rivers,
navigable for the most part only by fallen
trees. These rivers flow from the Carpathian
mountains, which divide the country to the
northward from Austria, and fiill into the
Danube, which divides it from Turkey. There
is a kind of postern-gate to the East, ill-closed
by the Pruth, a river that has often been
mentioned this year. In neither of the
Principalities are there many roads worthy of the
name. The cities, villages, or farming stations,
are generally connected only by tracks and
bridle-paths.

The geological construction of Moldo-
Wallachia is essentially volcanic. Its
mountains contain many craters frequently in a
state of eruption. Sulphur and bitumen are
plentiful. In some parts little spurts of
liquid metal are seen, from time to time,
breaking from the schistous rocks, flowing a
little way like melted lead, and then
condensing to the hardness of iron. In various
places, of late years, miniature volcanoes have
been known to start up from the ground and
flame bravely away for a few days amidst
corn-fields and pasturage. The Prathôva
river, in certain parts of its course, becomes
tepid or hot, or even boiling, according as it
flows or not over subterranean galleries of
fire. Earthquakes are frequent. It is not
long since nearly the whole of the city of
Bucharest was destroyed—Pô de Mogochoya,
and all. The shock was felt whilst the
principal inhabitants were at the theatre listening
to one of the dramas of Victor Hugo. Many
persons perished, and an immense amount of
property was of course lost. In the countries,
however, that are subject to these epileptic
fits of Nature, such accidents are quickly
forgotten and their consequences repaired. They
serve, indeed, the purpose of revolutions or
sanitary bills in more civilised lands. Bucharest,
at any rate, like Paris and London, has
been induced to widen its thoroughfares and
improve the build of its houses.

A great part of Moldo-Wallachia, especially
towards the mountains, is clothed in forest.
In few countries are beheld more magnificent
oaks; and travellers talk of having seen
thousands with trunks rising straight more
than eighty feet without branches. Mingled
with these splendid trees, or covering the
higher slopes with their dull verdure, are
enormous firs, that would delight the eye of
the ship-builder. Besides these, there are
elms and beeches of prodigious size, with
wild pear trees and senna, maple, cherry, and
yew trees, with many others. All these grow
in a tangled mass—grow or fall together,
beaten down by the tempest or uprooted by
rushing inundations. "In the low country
the millet has no more husk than the apple
has rind in the high," says the Wallachian
proverb, to picture the fertility of the country.
Its vast plains, indeed, are covered in the
season with splendid crops; of which those
who travel to Galatz can say something.
These districts are counted now, as they have
always counted, among the granaries of
Europe. It is worth remarking, that a young
French gentleman, who has studied political
economy, has lately recommended the
Moldo-Wallachians to neglect the culture of the
ground and take to the manufacture of cotton
cloths, in order to escape from the commercial
tyranny of perfidious Albion. The mysteries
of supply and demand, however, the definitions
of value, and the influence of tariffs, do not lie
in our way at present. We are not going to
discuss what is a pound, but to explain what
is the Wallachian substitute for a railway.
Before visiting or describing a country in
detail, it is good to know what means of
locomotion it possesses.

If you are not particularly pressed for time,
which no one ought to be in that part of the
world, it is best to use the great waggon
called the Kerontza, which resembles the
vehicles in which the burly boors of the Cape
sleep and smoke in their journey from one
kloof to another. It is of solid construction,
and well roofed with leather. A large family,
with all their luggage and paraphernalia, even
their cocks and hens, may travel in it; and
perhaps there could be no more romantic
way of spending six months than in jolting
about in one of these lumbering chariots
amidst the plains and forests of Wallachia.
The people of the country generally go from
place to place on foot, or mounted on horses,
buffaloes, or oxen. Asses are little used;
those humble quadrupeds being treated with
the same unchristian contempt as in most
other European countries. Asia and Africa
are their paradise. Among the Boyards,
however, it is fashionable to make use of
what is called a Karoutchor, a kind of vehicle
peculiar to the country, and which we sincerely
hope may ever remain so. As a traveller has
already remarked, it holds a position in the
scale of conveyances, a little above a
wheelbarrow and a little below a dungcart. It is,
properly speaking, a trough, a box without
a cover, three feet long, two feet wide, and
two feet and a half high. It rests, of course
without the intervention of springs, upon the
axles or beams; and is poised upon four
wheels made of solid wood, more or less
rounded by means of a hatchet. Perhaps
Boadicea's war-chariot was something of the
make of a karoutchor. Not a single nail