POLAND. 245 



in appearance. It was even aggravated for many thousands of them, a formal 

 liberty depriving them of all right to till the land on which their forefathers had 

 lived. On the eve of the last revolt the peasantry, properly so called, were 

 represented by no more than 22,000 landed proprietors, compared with 2,000,000 

 working on the lands of their masters, and 1,400,000 day labourers and menials. 

 How dilFerently might history have flowed had the champions of Polish independ- 

 ence been able to rely upon a free people, owners of the land, and eager to defend 

 it ! And even when the country had fallen, this was still the only means by 

 which it could hope again to rise. At least the Russians could in that case never 

 have played the part of liberators, as they did in 1863, when they gave the 

 peasant a portion of the land he cultivated. 



The greatest misfortune that can befall a people is the loss of its national 

 independence. Politically the Pole is a Pole only in the memory of the past. 

 He has become an alien in the land, and can speak his mother tongue only in 

 secret. His very thought is no longer free, and his genius is no longer developed 

 according to its natural bent. It is a calamity for all mankind that the life of a 

 whole people should thus be crushed ; but the Poles will yet again assert them- 

 selves, though perhaps in a different path from their former sphere, for they are 

 assuredly no whit inferior to their forefathers in industry, culture, and moral 

 force. Henceforth Poland, too feeble to recover her freedom apart, will seek a 

 fresh career and new fields of development jointly with the Russians themselves. 

 Instead of struggling for herself alone, she will struggle also for those lands with 

 which she is yoked perforce. 



The Land of the Vistula. — Prehistoric Remains. 



The " Land of the Vistula " within its new conventional limits may be 

 regarded as a vast uneven plain, with a mean elevation of from 350 to 500 feet. 

 In the north the land, mostly under forests, rises to a broad ridge stretching from 

 the Vistula to the Niémen parallel with the curved shore of the Baltic. But the 

 frontier-line follows the southern base of the plateau, leaving to Germany nearly 

 the whole of the lacustrine tract known as the *' Prussian Switzerland." In the 

 south the Sandomierz, or " Bald Mountain " (Lysa Gora), belongs, on the contrary, 

 altogether to the present Poland, running north-west and south-east parallel with 

 the Northern Carpathians, and culminating with Mount St. Catherine, 1,980 feet 

 high. Other groups of less elevated hills, but following the same direction, 

 occupy the southern portion of the province of Lublin, between the Vistula and 

 the Bug. Lastly, in the south-west the water-parting between the Oder and 

 Warta, and between the Warta and Pilica, is indicated by the crests of the " Polish 

 Switzerland," contrasting forcibly with the great northern tertiary plain in the 

 variety of their formations, including chalks, Jurassic, triassic, carboniferous, and 

 Devonian rocks. Mineral deposits of all sorts, copper, tin, zinc, iron, sulphur, 

 coal, have been discovered and partly worked in this hilly region. 



In the disposition of its water-partings Poland scarcely deserves its present 

 official name of "Land of the Vistula." All the western zone bordering on 



