Indian jfails. Varga) and the other Hungarian patriots and exiles left London and journeyed direct to Iowa. Their reception in New York was a notable one; the cause of Hungary was popular; Kossuth a hero, and the Austrian barbarities had shocked the whole world. The colony started farming, the statesmen turned farmers. Madarasz had shared with Kossuth the highest honors. For thirty years he had been Secretary of State in Hungary; during the provisional government he had been a member (along with Kossuth and Nyary) of the committee of three to adjust matters of State, similar to the President's cabinet in this country. "Madarasz signed our Declaration of In dependence," continued Varga. " The Dec laration we made April 14, 1849, but that we never celebrated. Majthenyi signed it too; he was Secretary of the House of Lords, he was a baron himself. Madarasz was the radical leader of our country. I myself was a noble. We had fought and failed; we came to this country to start life over again." Varga tried farming, as did the others, but he was a failure as a farmer; still he stuck to it for thirteen years. The Civil War broke out, and all the Hungarians espoused the cause of the North. Decatur county was the battlefield between Missouri and Iowa, slavery and non-slavery. There was a meet ing in Leon in the early days. "Slavery is sanctioned by the Constitu tion," said Henry Clay Dean, leader of De mocracy. "The Constitution says we can have slavery."
INDIAN
437
Varga, Hungarian, republican, rose and answered him. "Let us have a new Constitution then; away with the old one." For his services during the Civil War Varga was elected county clerk in 1864, and served four years; then he was elected county treas urer, and served six years; then eight years as deputy. When he took the treasury it had $1.40 in it. The rich paid no taxes, county warrants were worth only fifty cents on the dollar. Varga brought about reforms; he was doing for the little county of farmers what he had hoped to do for all Hungary. He had given up his title and ownership of more land than is in Decatur county, to serve the people of a foreign land. Since 1881, Varga had worked as an abstractor. He was admitted to the Hungarian bar in 1840; he had been a lawyer for sixty-one years. "The revolution of '49 made forty million serfs free," concluded Varga; "it abolished the feudal system, it extended the franchise; we succeeded partly, we had hoped for much more; but what we won can never be taken away from the people. I shall die happy. "I am an Hungarian. I cannot live much longer. But I die an American as well as an Hungarian. Ah, how I love this country. It is as dear to me as my heart's blood. No one can better appreciate its liberty and free dom than I — than the exiles who came with me. We were denied freedom and liberty in our own country; we found it, we found it, dear sir, in this. We bless the land of liberty."
JAILS.
Bv Andrew T. Sibbald. THE term "an Indian jail" includes buildings of many sorts, from a mas sive fortress built by the Mahrattas or the Moguls, to a shed with mud or mat walls,
which has been run up in a few hours to meet the exigencies of the day. " A lock up," as it is called, built with mats of split bamboo, is a more secure place of custody
