The Cordova daily times., 1920-05-31


 Switzerland and the Austrian
 Tyrol, in the midst of the noun
 tains lies the district VOrarl- Oerg, which after the war tried to es veape from the domination of Austria by voting in favor of joining Switzer- and. Probably very few persons in the United States had ever before even heard of VOrarlberg, which usually Aas been mistakenly Jumped in with the TyrOl. There is a perfectly we'll defined boundary between Vorarlberg and the Austrian Tyrol-namely, the watershed between the Rhine and the Danube, says the New York Times. Travellers over the Arlberg pass may see this boundary duly marked with monument The name VOrarlberg means the Hand beyond the Arlberg pass"-"beyond," that is, from the point of view of a person looking westward over the pass from the Aus trian Tyrol.
 The springs of the Rhine in Switz- erland are not far from the southern boundary of VOrarlberg, across the mountain known as the Rhatikon. In this part of Switzerland is the far . famed Engadine with its health re- sorts such as Davos-PlatZ Chur, etc. very much better known to the world > at large than the region to the north of it.
 In the north Vorarlberg reaches the beautiful lake of Constance on the shores of that lake is Bregenz, the pO- titical capital of the land. Bregenz yields precedence, so far as size is con- cerned, to Dornbirn, up in the noun tains behind the lake, but it is neverthe- less the most important place in VOr- Brlberg. The other leading towns are the railway junction of Feldkirch, where the lines from Tyrol, Germany and Switzerland meet, and Bludenz. Dornbirn, has about 15,OOO inhabitants, Bregenz about 10000, Feldkirch and Bludenz in the vicinity of 5000 each.
 Grabbed by the Hapsburgs.
 Previous to the breakup of the Aus tro-Hungarian empire, Vorarlberg was administered by "statthalter" res:d- Ing at Innsbruck, capital of the Austri- an Tyrol, but it also had governor of its own and an assembly of 21 mem- bers. It used to send four represent atives to the reichsrat, or imperial par Hament, at Vienna.
 The Hapsburgs began by adding VOr- arlberg to their motley collection of territories back in the fourteenth cen tury. Feldkirch was incorporated in their dominiOns in 1875, Bludenz and the picturesque Montavon valley in 1894, the Bregenz region. in 1451 and 1923, Sonnenberg in 1455 and HOhen- ems in 1765. It was after the annex at1on Of the latter to Austria that En- press Maria Theresa united all the dis tricts of the region under the name VOrarlberg and placed a governor over them with his residence at Bregenz. In 1782 the region was made a part of the Tyrol, and in 1894, during the NapoleOnic wars, it Was annexed to Bavaria. It was not until 1914 that Vorarlberg was separated from Ba- varia and restored, with the exception LII LIIC ulolI1tL OI A1olACiiCIhs Io LIN n us trian crown. In the following year the region received it's present status
 The area of Vorarlberg is 1.0O( square miles, and it has something like f5O,OO0 inhabitants, practically all ot whom speak German, the exception being those who still cling to that strange dialect known as "Romansch' or "Romanic," which the Roman set tiers imprinted upon the inhabitants of this region when it was known as Rhaetfa.
 How It's People Live.
 Tn the more mountainous sections of the little land the inhabitants are pas toral: in the towns the spinning and weaving of cotton had risen before the war to a ffourishing condition, as had various other lines of industry. Trade with the surrounding countries also grew rapidly in the years before the war: schools were improved, factories snrang LID in the towns, roads and bridges were built, and railway connec- lion established northward. westward, and eastward. From the leading Vor- arlberg centers-Bregenz, Feldkircfl, BIudenz-one may travel in few