The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1892-04-16
WAKEMAN'S WANDERINGS.
Austria's Portion of the Polish
Murder and Rapine.
This Poet Traveller Reaches Remote
Galicia-Historic Hints-The Poles
Under Austrian Rule-Grand High
ways and Numberless Roadside
shrines-A Strange Mountain Peas


Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION. Copyright, 1897
CRAcow (Austria), March 26, 1892.
There are two European Galicias. Each
of these in their peasant life possesses
great interest to the traveller. Spanish
Galicia, comprising the northwestern
provinces of Pontenedra, Lugo, Coruna
and Orense, will ever hold for me the
most tender recollections. Its Gallegan
folk are the bravest, most patient and
loyal in the world. They love their rug
ged mountain land with so passionate
devotion that they will suffer untold prl-
walton and even death before they will
give it up. They become the "Gallegan
dog'' servants of all Spain, Portugal and
Italy for half their lives, bearing lncon-
ceivable contumely, sacrifice and suffer-
ing that they may finally come back to
their dreary crags and wild and almost
sterile glens to the ownership OF little
cabin, tiny patch of land, and the to
them blessed right to lay their bones IN
the same graves as those who have Ia
bored, sacrificed and died in precisely
the same way for ages before them. They
are dumb folk, but not even Spanish
monarch has ever dared attempt their en-
Slavement.
The other Galicia is less tender and win
some in any of its aspects. 1t is indeed
UNNECESSARILY more somber and tragic.
1t is Austrian Poland.
Every one remembers the history of
ancient Poland: its line of warrior kings;
its splendid and unrewarded victories Tor
Christianity over the Turks; its great
universities; even its wonderful medieval
literature; its kingly commoners and It's
peasant kings; and the final treachery OF
Russia'S Catherine, which led to repeated
ACKNOWLEDGMENT and partition of old
with the horrors of hundred years OF in
surrection, murder, slavery and des-
potism that followed.
1t is all too horrible to dwell upon.
Austria's portion out of the Polish muir
der and rapine, Galicia, comprises an
area of over $4,000 square miles, bounded
north and east by Russia, on the south by
Hungary and Bukovina, and on the west
by Prussia and Austrian Silesia. Fully
100000 souls occupy this area.
OF these about 2, 250,000 are Rnsniaks-
INTERCHANGEABLE called Russinen, Ruth
enans and Ruthenians, whom shall call
Ruthenians in these papers, ana who are
of Russian stock and tongue. A million
and half are Jews. The remainder are
about equally divided between Austrian
and Russian Germans.
Almost the entire nobility are of Polish
extraction and are country loving and
living people. The peasantry are all
Poles and RutheDians. 1t will therefore
be readily seen that nearly the entire in
habitants of Galician towns and cities are
Polish Jews and Germans, the former
greatly predominating. To illustrate,
this ancient city whose population does
not exceed $4,000 souls, contains $4,000
Jews. Lemberg, commercially the lead
ing city of Galicia, has 10000 Jews
among its 100000 people. And [ have
The word of friend, Canadian resident
of Kolomea, that among the 5000 inhab-
itants of the latter city more than y, 900
are Jews.
Practically, then, Austrian Galicia pre-
sentS for study four classes-the Polish
and Ruthenian peaSantry who, while
theoretically free men, are more slavish
than slaves; the ancient Polish nobility
who are either rich and great enough to
live almost regally in Berlin, London or
Paris, or home-loying enough to live
upon their own estates something after
the simple and patriarchal manner of
Count Tolstoi, not very tar to the north of
them; the Jews who financially own both
peasant and master, body and soul, as
well as all business affairs of every name
and nature, and the military who re-
lentlessly control them all.
Austrian rule over its share of fallen
Poland, which for the first three-quarters
of a century after its seizure was quite as
cruel as that of the Russian plunderers to
the north, has had the virtue of not hav-
ing retained its more barbarous iniqui-
lies. 1t is still impossible to escape the
clang of the Saber, the jingle of the spur,
the challenge of the sentry and the al
most intolerable insolence of the omni-
present soldiery.
These uniformed tyrants are in every
railway carriage or station. They accom-
pany every coach. They dog the stran-
ger from hotel to countryside and back
again with imperturbable etfrontery.
They enter the home at will and by
their goddess presence sully every sanctu-
AIRY and pollute every shrine; while spies
are so Understanding among all classes
in the guise of officials, merchants, arte-
sans, laborerS, peasants and comprising
in one form or other more than one
twentieth of the entire population-that
the very air is said to LISTEN in Galieia.
Despite all this the Australian Poles of
Galicia live I'm ParadiSa' in contrast
with their brethren, ten miles north of
the city, in Russian Poland. The electoral
reform law of 1873 gave the Galician
Poles direct elections 10 the Vienna As
sembly by districts, thus breaking down
old clannish national Polish interest The
Government has wisely encouraged agri-
cultural reforms and awakened an emu
lative spirit between native Poles and
Ruthenians and many small but thriving
German agricultural colonies. And
among other sensible things it has done
the one thing which should be first and
best done i'll every farming community
in the world-built roads that will vie in
their enduring qualities with the finest to
be found in England or New England.
Indeed, in wandering through Galicia
i am not certain but that 1 would count
these grand Galician roads as the greatest
of all blessings of all time to the peasant
Poles. Their general direction has been
governed by the course of the great chain
of Carpathian Mountains which forms
the Hungarian boundary on the south.
Away down in the southeast corner of
Bukoyina, over against wild and I'M
traversed Bessarabia and wilder Mol
dayia, this great artery of Galician life
and commerce begins. Thence to the
northeast 1t passes through Kolomea.
which has recently come into prominence
from being the base Of operations in the
new Gallclan petroleum fields. Thence.
through the valley of the Pruth into the
valley of the Dniester, it touches ancient
Stanislavov, whence it bears north to
Iemberg, the central and greatest city of
Galicia. From Lemberg, it winds like
the Carpathians around TO the west and
passes through this ancient Polish capital.
and thence on TO Moravia and Vienna,
On this mighty thoroughtare, fully 700
English miles in length, are all the great
market towns of Galicia; and despite her
newer railways, which for the most part
run parallel with it, pass to and fro TO this
day most of the goods and products
which the circles of Galicia exchange
with each other, the rude products of
Moldavia and Bessarabia, the cattle from
the great steppes, which reach the Ger
man and Austrian abbattoirs, the willow
carts of fancy wares from Austria to Rms
STA, and all the innumerable and unnam-
able goods and wares which are smuggled