I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.) I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool if so my stay may be very interesting. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it.

I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North.

I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordance Survey Maps but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don’t know how I should be able to get on without it. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl,” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. Bistritz.–Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.

Dracula bram stoker