The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

25 2 KtTSSIA IN EUEOPE.In the "Warta basin, but not on the river, are also Turek, Ozorkov, Lcezyca, andother industrial places, amongst which is Lodz, in 1821 a hamlet of 800 inhabitants,now the second largest and most manufacturing city in Poland. It consists of asin"lc street some 6 miles long, lined on either side by artisans' dwellings andhundreds of cotton-spinning, cloth-weaving, dyeing, and other industrial establishments,mostly in the hands of Germans. Here are produced seven-eighthsof all the cotton goods manufactured in Poland, valued (1873) at about£1,755,000.In the basin of the Pilica, which flows to the Vistula above Warsaw, are Prsedborz,an agricultural centre ;Piotrkow, capital of a province ; and Tonuiszoir, withsome woollen factories. Farther south is Radom, capital of the province of likename, an old place, where an active trade is still carried on between the plains andthe uplands. On the southern slopes of the Lysa Gora are several industrial towns,including Kickc, capital of the government, with iron works and sugar refineries ;Checiny, near which are some marble quarries ;Chmiclnik ; Pinczoir, with pyritesmines ; Wislica, formerly a royal residence, and associated with the " Statute ofWislica," framed by Casimir the Great in 1347 ; Noire Miasto, with rich sulphurbeds ; Bakow, now a mere village, but in the seventeenth century the intellectualcentre of the Socinians, and destroyed by order of the Senate in 1638 ;lastly,Sandomierx, on the Vistula, capital of the kingdom during the thirteenth century,with an old castle and a Byzantine church dating from that epoch. Its chiefinrportance now consists in its timber and shipping business.East of the Vistula, and in the valley of the Bug, lies the town of Lublin, capitalof the government of like name, till the rise of Lodz the second city in Poland, andfor grandeur of appearance still second only to Warsaw. In the Jagello period itwas said to have 40,000 inhabitants, but, repeatedly sacked by the Tatars andCossacks, it was often reduced to a mere village. Beyond the present town shapelessruins still cover a large area, and some picturesque fragments of the old wallsare still standing. Hero was held the stormy Diet of 1568 and 1569, in which theincorporation of Lithuania was decreed. As a fortress Lublin has been supersededby Zamosz, founded in the sixteenth century by Count Zamoyski on a swampyupland near the Austrian boundary.Like its neighbours Bilgoraj and Hrubieszow,it trades chiefly with Volhynia and Galicia. Bilgoraj does a special business insieves to the amount of about 1,000,000 yearly.On a tributary of the Bug and east of Lublin, in the Little Russian territory,stands Kholm (in Polish, Chelm), one of the oldest Russian cities, with a castlewhich the Tatars never succeeded in taking. Since 1839 it has been the episcopaltown of the Uniates ; that is, of the Orthodox Greeks united with Rome, of whomvery few now remain in Poland.Throughout its middle course the Vistula flows between the governments ofLublin and Radom before trending north-west, passing by the magnificent castleand grounds of Pulawy, the present Noiro Alexandria.All its books, manuscripts,and art treasures have been removed to St. Petersburg, and the palace has becomea college for girls of noble rank. Farther down, at the confluence of the Vistula