The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

POLAND. 245in appearance. It was even aggravated for many thousands of them, a formalliberty depriving them of all right to till the land on which their forefathers hadlived. On the eve of the last revolt the peasantry, properly so called, wererepresented by no more than 22,000 landed proprietors, compared with 2,000,000working on the lands of their masters, and 1,400,000 day labourers and menials.How differently might history have flowed had the champions of Polish independencebeen able to rely upon a free people, owners of the land, and eager to defendit ! And even when the country had fallen, this was still the only means bywhich it could hope again to rise.At least the Russians could in that case neverhave played the part of liberators, as they did in 1863, when they gave thepeasant a portion of the land he cultivated.The greatest misfortune that can befall a people is the loss of its nationalindependence. 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 insecret. His very thought is no longer free, and his genius is no longer developedaccording to its natural bent. It is a calamity for all mankind that the life of awhole people should thus be crushed ; but the Poles will yet again assert themselves,though perhaps in a different path from their former sphere, for they areassuredly no whit inferior to their forefathers in industry, culture, and moralforce. Henceforth Poland, too feeble to recover her freedom apart, will seek afresh career and new fields of development jointly with the Russians themselves.Instead of struggling for herself alone, she will struggle also for those lands withwhich she is yoked perforce.The Laxd of the Vistula.— Prehistoric Remains.The " Land of the Vistula " within its new conventional limits may beregarded 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 fromthe Vistula to the Niemen parallel with the curved shore of the Baltic. But thefrontier-line follows the southern base of the plateau, leaving to Germany nearlythe whole of the lacustrine tract known as the " Prussian Switzerland." In thesouth the Sandomierz, or " Bald Mountain " (Lysa Gora), belongs, on the contrary,altogether to the present Poland, running north-west and south-east parallel withthe Northern Carpathians, and culminating with Mount St. Catherine, 1,980 feethigh. Other groups of less elevated hills, but following the same direction,occupy the southern portion of the province of Lublin, between the Vistula andthe Bug. Lastly, in the south-west the water-parting between the Oder andWarta, and between the Warta and Pilica, is indicated by the crests of the " PolishSwitzerland," contrasting forcibly with the great northern tertiary plain in thevariety of their formations, including chalks, Jurassic, triassic, carboniferous, andDevonian 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 presentofficial name of "Land of the Vistula." All the western zone bordering on