PARTITIONED POLAND 



95 



AUSTRIAN POIvAND 



Austrian Poland is practically em- 

 braced by the crownland of Galicia. 

 This crownland is almost exactly the 

 size of the State of South Carolina, but 

 it has a population six times as great. If 

 continental United States, exclusive of 

 Alaska, were as densely populated as 

 Galicia, we would boast of a population 

 four times as great as that of Russia. 



And yet Galicia is the poorest of all 

 the provinces of Austria. It lies outside 

 the ramparts of the Carpathians, which 

 turn a cold and unfriendly back to it, the 

 while they cast a protecting shelter 

 around the northern side of that great 

 oval basin known to geography as Hun- 

 gary. 



Where Hungary is protected by these 

 mountains from the cold winds that 

 sweep down from the Baltic, they rob 

 Galicia of the warm winds that sweep up 

 from the Mediterranean. And where 

 they help to form that great ring of nat- 

 ural defense around Hungary which is 

 pierced only by the Iron Gate of the 

 Danube on the east and by the gateway 

 Ox Porto Hungarica on the west, they 

 turn away from Galicia, occupying nearly 

 a third of her territory, but running 

 away from the protection they might 

 have afforded her flanks. 



This inhospitality of the Carpathians 

 toward Galicia leaves her with her back 

 turned against steep and forbidding 

 mountain sides that bend away from her, 

 exposes her sides to hostile attack, and 

 allows her to sit with her feet buried in 

 the Russian plain. 



Robbing Galicia of the warm winds 

 that otherwise would come to her from 

 the south, they also turn back upon her 

 the cold winds of the north, which other- 

 wise would sweep over Hungary. Thus 

 they give her long, cold winters ; short, 

 wet springs : hot, blistering summers, and 

 dreary, chilly autumns. 



CRACOW AND LEMBERG 



The glory of her past and the hope of 

 her future are Cracow and Lemberg to 

 Poland, for it was the former that was 

 her capital in the yesterday of history 

 and the latter that is her capital today 



and which would be her capital tomor- 

 row were Polish dreams to come true. 



In Cracow, the great city of Poland's 

 past, the royal palace still stands ; but it 

 is used as a barracks and not as the home 

 of a king. The cathedral, from which 

 Poland's heart arose to its God, is now 

 the Valhalla of its departed greatness ; 

 for there sleep the kings and the heroes 

 from the Jagellons to Kosciuszko. Not 

 far away is Kosciuszkoberg, one of the 

 most remarkable memorials ever reared 

 by the hand of man — a huge mound of 

 earth brought by loyal Poles from every 

 battle-field in the world consecrated with 

 Pohsh blood. After the annexation of 

 Cracow by Austria this great mound was 

 transformed into a fort ; but with all that, 

 it still stands as a tribute to the great 

 hero whose sword was drawn in behalf 

 of freedom both in Poland and in 

 America. 



The country around Cracow is flat and 

 is devoted almost wholly to small farm- 

 ing and trucking. The peasants dress in 

 white jackets and blue breeches, and wear 

 jack-boots; their women folk, with large 

 bright shawls and picturesque head-dress, 

 brighten and give spirit to the country- 

 side. 



From Cracow to Temberg the traveler 

 encounters good land; it is fairly level 

 and entirely innocent of fences, boundary 

 stones marking party lines and tethers 

 or herdsmen keeping livestock where it 

 belongs. The same methods of agricul- 

 ture that we used in the United States 

 before the days of the self-binder and 

 the grain drill are still in force in that 

 region. 



It is in Lemberg that the only Polish- 

 dominated legislative assembly in exist- 

 ence holds its sessions ; for Lemberg is 

 the capital of Galicia, and the Poles, both 

 because of their shrewd political ability 

 and their numerical weight, control the 

 Galician legislature in the face of their 

 rivals, the Ruthenians of East Galicia. 

 The city of Lemberg is largely modern- — ■ 

 a compact nucleus surrounded by scat- 

 tering suburbs. 



GALICIAN INDUSTRIES 



While Galicia is almost wholly an agri- 

 cultural region, and while a large per- 



