THE PASSPORT SYSTEM.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3134, 14 July 1881, Page 4

THE PASSPORT SYSTEM.

A pleasant illustration of the quaint, shortcomings that characterise the passport Bjsfcem still curront in more than one continental realm is afforded by the confessions of a Hungarian waiter who had just returned to his native city, Pesth, at the expiration of a four years' professional tour through Servia, Roumania, aud tho Slavonic provinces of European Turkey. This waiter, wishing to improve his mind and circumstances by foreign travel, applied in the autumn of 1876 to the police authorities of Pesth for a passport, which, however, was refused him upon the ground that he was tinable to exhibit certain requisite proofs of his identity, such as certificate of birth, baptism, ana so lorth. Determined to carry out his project, he contrived to obtain one of the printed and stamped permits for the conveyance of horned beasts over the state railways which are granted to^ cattledealers by a sub-department of the Ministry of Communications. This pass he presented at the first frontier he found himself called upon to cross on quitting Hungary—that of Serria —and the official to whose inspection it was submitted, being probably ignorant of the Hungai-ian language, and seeing an official stamp and signature duly appended to the body of the document, granted without hesitation the usual visa. The first visa thus obtained, others followed upon its authority, as a matter of course 5 and when the owner of the permit consigned it to official custody on his return to Hungary, it was covered with imperial, royal, and princely frontier recognitions of his identity with the animal of which it set forth tln> description as follows : —" One milch cow, aged seven years; color, reddish brown: distinctive marks, the right horn broken near the tip."