The ambassador commenced his journey on the 15th of January, 1717; and the snow lying deep upon the ground, their carriages were fixed upon _traneaus_, which moved over the slippery surface with astonishing rapidity. In two days they arrived at Raab, where the governor and the Bishop of Temeswar, an old man of a noble family, with a flowing white beard hanging down to his girdle, waited upon them with polite attentions and invitations, which their desire to continue their journey compelled them to reject. The plains lying between this city and Buda, level as the sea, and of amazing natural fertility, but now through the ravages of war deserted and uncultivated, presented nothing but one unbroken sheet of snow to the eye; nor, excepting its curious hovels, half above and half below the surface of the earth, forming the summer and winter apartments of the inhabitants, did Buda afford any thing worthy of observation. The scene which stretched itself out before them upon leaving Buda was rude, woody, and solitary, but abounding in game of various kinds, which appeared to be the undisturbed lords of the soil. The peasants of Hungary at that period were scanty and poor, dressed in a coat, cap, and boots of sheepskin, and subsisting entirely upon the wild animals afforded by their plains and woods.
On the 26th they crossed the frozen Danube, pushed on through woods infested by wolves, and arrived in the evening at Essek. Three days more brought them to Peterwaradin, whence, having remained there a few days to refresh themselves after their long journey, they departed for Belgrade. On their way to this city they passed over the fields of Carlowitz, the scene of Prince Eugene’s last great victory over the Turks, and beheld scattered around them on all sides the broken fragments of those instruments with which heroes open themselves a path to glory: sculls and carcasses of men, mingled and trodden together with those of the horse and the camel, the noble, patient brutes which are made to participate in their madness.
During their pretty long stay at Belgrade, Lady Mary, whose free and easy disposition admirably adapted her for a traveller, contracted an acquaintance with Achmet Bey, a Turkish _effendi_, or literary man, whom she understood to be an accomplished Arabic and Persian scholar, and who, delighted with the novelty of the thing, undertook to initiate our female _effendi_ in the mysteries of oriental poetry, judiciously selecting such pieces as treated of love. In conversation with this gentleman she learned with surprise that the Persian Tales, which at that time were in Europe supposed to be forgeries, and consequently of no authority or value, except as novels, were genuine oriental compositions, like the Arabian Nights, and therefore to be regarded as admirable illustrations of manners.