"stoker-dracula-168" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

1897

DRACULA

by Bram Stoker

CHAPTER I.

JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL.

(Kept in shorthand.)

3 May. Bistriz.- 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. 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. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had
arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. 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.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to
Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I
had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with
red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., 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 found my smattering of German
very useful here; indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get
on without it.

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
importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. 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. 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 Ordnance Survey
maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula,
is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes,
as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.

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,