[April 24, 1915. 
LAND AND SKATER. 
^v— 5'^*- : 
will be in a better position to advance southward 
than will the Austro- Germans to advance north- 
ward. For they will have behind them short, 
easy, and numerous communications, while their 
enemies will have long, difficult, and few communi- 
cations. 
Let us conclude this survey of the mere posi- 
tions by examining the ground and the communi- 
cations in some detail, and for that purpose I will 
append another sketch map. 
Notice in the first place upon this map the 
length of the front. The Austro-German defence 
of Cracow holds the valley of the Dunajec in its 
lower part, and the valley of its tributary, the 
Biala, up to the summits of the mountains. In 
other words, the railway from Tarnow to Kaschau 
cannot be used by the enemy, but he has probably 
by this time built a subsidiary line linking up 
Neu Sandec with the main Cracow line. From this 
front along the Dunajec and the Biala, from, say, 
such a point as Jaslo to Dorna Watra on the 
Roumanian frontier, is a line near to which, but in 
a bow slightly bending eastward of which, runs 
the full length of the Carpathian chain, or, rather, 
of that part of it concerning the present opera- 
tions. The direction is but a little eastward of due 
south-east ; the distance is 410 kilometres, or just 
under 255 miles. Counting the sinuosities of the 
front and the curve of the mountain chain, we are 
dealing with something rather over 300 miles of 
country. In this stretch the range continually 
rises. The height of the mountain mass above 
Bartfeld is about 3,800 feet high. Immediately 
to the east the whole range sinks, and there is a 
sort of natural saddle, the lowest point of which is 
the Dukla Pass; for about that point the rise 
begins. There is a peak, before the Uzsok Pass is 
reached, already nearer 4,600 than 4,500 feet. In 
the midst of the vast woods forty miles away to the 
south-east there is a peak not far short of 6,000 
feet. Beyond the Jablonitza Pass the Pop Ivan 13 
over 6,000, and immediately overlooking Dorna 
;Watra itself and the Roumanian frontier is a peak 
nearer 8,000 than 7,000 feet in height. 
As with the peaks, so with the passes. They 
climb higher and higher as one goes from the 
region of Cracow towards the frontier of Rou- 
mania. The Lupkow and the Dukla are not 2,00Q 
feet above the sea ; the Uzsok is nearly 3,000. The 
Beskid Pass between Stryj and Munkacs is a little 
lower, but the Jablonitza is well over 3,000, and 
the road pass of Stiol, which is the highest of all, 
is, I believe, nearly 4,000. 
We have already seen that with the gradual 
rise and broadening of the Chain as it goes south- 
wards the country gets more deserted, the forest 
larger, and the communications more rare. Within 
the first sixty miles of Polyanka the passes^ 
all of which are in the hands of the Russians now, 
number no less than six high roads and one double 
line of railway. In the next sixty miles you have 
but three road passes and two single lines of rail- 
way, unless one counts as two separate avenues for 
advance the two roads which diverge from the 
Beskid Pass, one towards Ungvar, the other 
towards Munkacs. In the remaining distance of 
over 120 miles there are only two road passes, one 
of which, along the Delatin or Jablonitza, is 
accompanied by a single line of railway. 
In connection with these passes it may be of 
interest to delay for a moment upon a point 
which has been discussed recently in the papers :' 
the accuracy of the term " Magyar Way." 
Tradition points to the invasion of the Hun- 
garian Plain by the Magj'^ars in the ninth 
century over the comparatively open gap 
which leads from Stryj to Munkacs, and is to- 
day generally known as the Beskid Pass. This tra- 
dition is accepted, I belicA'c by the learned bodies 
of modern Hungary, and the national monument 
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