Page:Glimpses of Bohemia by MacDonald (1882).pdf/28

 guard-room, sentries kept the staircase, while a couple of soldiers stood motionless at the door of one of the principal rooms. This was all explained when we were told that the Austrian commander-in-chief, the celebrated Arch-Duke Albert, was staying in the house. Then, for the information of the police, we had to fill up schedules with full particulars of who and what we were, and when I had leisure to look out at a window, there again were soldiers, hundreds of them, exercising in a large barrack-yard right opposite the hotel. With a population considerably less than Edinburgh, Prague has a garrison of 10,000 men, so that one sees soldiers—soldiers everywhere. The burden of the colossal army Austria keeps up is enormous. The war estimates do not by any means show what her army costs, for the common soldiers get but three halfpence a day for pay, while their allowance of rations costs the Government only four pence a day per head. All but the very lowest class of the population supplement the Government allowance, so that the most of the soldiers, while in the service, are burdens on their relations, instead of being bread-winners.

To come back to Prague, however. At first we wandered through the narrow streets of the Alt Stadt, lined with colossal buildings, with here and there a spacious market-place. One also comes with some surprise on broader streets, erected under modern improvement schemes, principally on the sites of old fortifications. But the main features of this part of the town are the ancient, musty buildings, narrow streets, and faulty drainage of the medieval walled city, so that, when you emerge on the Carlsbrücke, the wonderful bridge of Prague across the Moldau, it is with a feeling of relief at again finding yourself in the open. The view from the bridge on a clear day is most fascinating; but clear days in Bohemia, though commoner than in Scotland, are by no means the invariable rule. Often Longfellow’s lines may be realised:

This end of the bridge is guarded by the Alt Stadt Tower, a beautifully decorated fortified gateway of the 15th century. Passing by, in the