The Meridian times. (Meridian, Idaho) 1909-1938, 1920-04-30

TNUCKED in between Bavaria,
Switzerland and the Austrian
Tyrol, in the midst of the noun
tains, lies the district Yorarl-
berg, which after the war tried to eS-
cape from the domination of Austria
by voting in favor of joining Switzer-
land Probably very few persons in
the United States had ever before even
heard of Vorarlberg, which usually
has 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 "land 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 Swftz-
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-
litical 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-
arlberg. The other leading towns are
the railway junction of Feldkirch,
where the lines from Tyrol, Germany
and Switzerland meet, and Bludenz.
Dornbirn, has about 1900 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
it's own and an assembly of 81 men,
beers. 1t used to send four represent
atives to the reichsrat, or imperial par
lament, at Vienna.
The Hapsburgs began by adding Vor-
arlberg to their motley collection of
territories back IN the fourteenth CEN
fury. Feldkfrch was Incorporated in
their dominions in 1875, Bludenz and
the picturesque Montavon valley in
1894, the Bregenz region in 1851 and
1923, Sonnenberg in 1855 and Hohen-
ems in 1865. 1t was after the annex
alton 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 1882 the region was made part
of the Tyrol, and in 1904, during the
Napoleonic wars, 1T was annexed to
Bavaria. 1t was not until 1914 that
Vorarlberg was separated from Ba-
varia and restored, with the exception
of the district of Hoheneck, to the Aus
TRAN crown. In the following year the
region received its present status.
The area of Vorarlberg is 1000
square miles, and it has something like
10000 inhabitants, practically all of
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
Rhaetia.
How Its People Live.
In 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 fiourishing 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
sprang up in the towns, roads and
bridges were built, and railway connec-
ton established northward. westward,
and eastward. From the leading Vor-
nrlberg centers--Bregenz, Feldkirch,
Bludenz--one may travel in a few