AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



States Which Composed the Monarchy. The 

 United - nd Canada are made up of 



or provinces, but those countri. 

 give no adequate idea of the composition of 

 Austria-Hungary, for each one of the numerous 

 Austro-Hungarian provinces was once a sover- 

 eign 6tate, and they were brought together 

 merely by force of circumstances and not by 

 any real bond of unity. The first great divi- 

 sion was into the Austrian Empire and the 

 Hungarian Kingdom, the former with 115,831, 

 and the latter with 125 .611 square miles. 

 Hungary was fairly compact, but Austria, with 

 its various provinces, was spread in a sort 

 of crescent shape about Hungary. Bosnia and 

 Herzegovina, after 1908 an integral part of the 

 monarchy, had a combined area of 19,767 square 

 miles. 



The striking peculiarity of its surface is the 

 prevalence of high land, for Austria-Hungary 

 was more mountainous than any other part of 



LOCATION MAP OF OLD AUSTRIA- 

 HUNGARY 



Europe except Switzerland. The western prov- 

 inces were practically covered by spurs of the 

 Alps, and though the mountains nowhere attain 

 the height of the greatest Swiss peaks, still 

 several summits rise to almost 13,000 feet, and 

 the Tyrol, the most westerly province, is 

 !v second to Switzerland in the beauty of 

 its scenery. 



The other chief mountain range is the Car- 

 pathian, which swept in a great curve 800 miles 

 in length about the northern and eastern boun- 

 daries of Hungary; they rise at times to a 

 height of over 8,000 feet. Elsewhere, too, 

 lesser mountain regions are found, the Adriatic 

 being bordered by a highland which makes of 

 the coast a region of marvelous scenic beauty. 



504 AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



Several of the smaller provinces had basin-like 

 hollows within their mountain boundaries, but 

 only in Hungary was there a level region of 

 any extent. There, within the curve of the 

 Carpathians, lies a great plain of over 30,000 

 square miles, as flat as the Mississippi Valley 

 prairie region, and as fertile. 



About three-fourths of the entire country 

 was drained by the Danube River system the 

 greatest in Europe save the Volga; and it is 

 difficult to estimate what has been the effect 

 of this river system on the history of the 

 country (see subhead Transportation, below). 

 The Theiss, Drave and Save are all tributa- 

 ries of the Danube, while the Elbe and the 

 Vistula flow northward, and the Adige flows 

 through Italy into the Adriatic. Of lakes 

 Austria had few of any importance, but the 

 little crystal-clear lakes of the Alps, thousands 

 of feet above sea level, helped to make that 

 region one of the most picturesque in all 

 Europe. Hungaiy had the Flatten See, the 

 largest lake of Southern Europe. 



Climate and Agriculture. Though one of 

 the most southerly countries of continental 

 Europe, Austria-Hungary ranged in latitude 

 from about that of Chicago to a point a little 

 north of Winnipeg, or from 42 to 51 N. 

 The climate is for the most part mild, but the 

 considerable differences in altitude give a wide 

 range of temperatures, the yearly average vary- 

 ing from 48 in the extreme northern part to 

 62 in the southern. In southern Dalmatia, on 

 the Adriatic coast, tropical plants', which in 

 .America's greatest cities could be raised only 

 in greenhouses, may be grown out-of-doors. 



The rainfall, like the temperature, varies 

 greatly in different parts of the country. In 

 some of the western mountainous regions it 

 is more than 100 inches a year, while in Lower 

 Austria, Moravia and Silesia it is not more 

 than one-fourth as much. Everywhere, how- 

 ever, there is sufficient moisture for agricul- 

 ture. 



Agriculture is the most important indus- 

 try of all this area. The variations in surface 

 and in rainfall permit the successful produc- 

 tion of a large number of crops, including some 

 which are subtropical, as the orange and the 

 olive. Austria-Hungary was often spoken of as 

 the granary of Europe. The great plains of 

 Hungary produced more corn than was grown 

 in any other European country. The dual 

 monarchy's wheat crop was exceeded only by 

 Russia and France, its oats by Germany and 

 France, its barley by Russia and Germany, 



