THE FUTURE OF THE POLES.

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Schools are rarely found in the villages, and only a minority of the children attend school in the towns. While I was eating my rumpsteak at Myslowitz-it was a very tender one, and deserves to be publicly mentioned I saw crowds of little children running along the street merrily to school; not simply clean, tidy youngsters of the respectable classes, but also shornheaded, barelegged, ragged little mortals of the London Arab description. Myslowitz is very much behind the rest of Germany in the race of civilization, but even there every child, however poor, has to go to school.

In German Poland the whole of the rising generation is being educated. To a great extent this is also the case, I believe, with the Poles in Galicia. In Russian Poland, on the other hand, the children are growing up as ignorant of the three R's as the majority of youngsters elsewhere in the Tsar's empire. Panslavism may be a very fine creed-for some of its advocates at Moscow, whom I personally know, I have a sincere esteem-but I cannot detect in it any attraction that should cause the educated Poles of Germany and Austria to throw in their lot with the ignorant and oppressed masses of Russia.

When I had finished dining at the inn at Myslowitz I went for a ramble in the country. As usual in Slavland, there was nothing in the landscape to invite a prolonged walk. Forest scenery one never tires ofhad Myslowitz been one of the out-of-the-way stations of Northern Russia I should have quickly got rid of my six hours' ennui by exploring the woods, heedless of problematical wolves and inevitable mosquitoes. But the surroundings of Myslowitz were similar to those that prevail throughout the whole of the southern part of the great plain of Europe inhabited by the Slavsoblong patches of vegetation stretching away over a flat

expanse as far as the eye could see, with not a tree or a shrub to enliven the landscape. Even the most inveterate lover of country walks would rapidly tire of toiling along a dusty or muddy road, full of ruts, with nothing to see except everlasting patches of wheat, barley, oats, millet, and buckwheat. It is curious that the Teuton, wherever he goes, carries with him his love of trees and a bit of garden. The Slav, on the other hand, seems to prefer a desert. German colonies are scattered all over Russia, from the Baltic to the Caspian. If you are travelling through some of the southern districts intervening between those two seas, and are sick of traversing mile after mile of flat country, village after village of Slavs, without seeing a tree or a bush, you may rest assured if you hear that a German colony is near that you will find it buried in verdure.

Returning to the station, I made the rest of the time fly by writing until the train was ready to start. As usual in Germany, the railway officials were very obliging. One porter in particular--he who had caused my detention by sending on my luggage by the wrong train attended me most assiduously, assisting me in arranging my writing materials on a table in the waiting-room, bringing me coffee, and continually dropping in to see how I was going on, until the first bell rang, when he carried me and my hand luggage off to a coupé in the train he had secured for me. His unremitting exertions on my behalf even extended to licking for me the postage stamp he had obtained for the letter I had written-and taking it off afterwards, I imagine, for neither the letter nor the stamp ever reached its destination.

From Myslowitz to the first station on the Austrian side of the frontier, Oswiecim, the journey occupies about an hour. I noticed that all the houses in the villages

ENTERING AUSTRIA.

15

passed en route, in common with the whole of the buildings in Myslowitz, were loopholed. This may be said to be a regular feature of German frontier habitations, at any rate along the Austrian and Russian borders. Many of the loopholes bore obvious traces of having been hurriedly broken through the walls during former wars, but there must be some local regulation in force that keeps them open still, as they are all unclosed, and the whole of the new buildings that are constructed alongside the main roads or railways are furnished with musketry slits. Thanks to the prevalence of this system, the villages and towns in the German borderlands are capable of rapid defence against cavalry, and constitute a troublesome impediment to invaders.

Oswiecim is an important strategical point, for the Russian and German railway systems converge upon the point and join the Cracow-Vienna Railway. The station, however, is very insignificant; and more like a roadside refreshment-house than anything else, and the refreshments, like the officials, are very indifferent. I found my luggage waiting for me, and had it passed without any difficulty; then whiled away the hour we had to wait by drinking a tumbler of coffee with some Russians. When the train arrived I was particularly pleased with the handsome character of the Austrian carriages, and the urbanity of the guards. The carriages are on the American principle, and are fitted with every comfort, but have the defect of the gangway running through the centre of them instead of at one of the sides. By this means it is impossible to get a six-foot stretch at night. The best ordinary first-class carriages in Europe, in my opinion, are the new ones on the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway. These are fitted with three rows of easy chairs, one along the centre of the carriage and the other two at the sides. By touching a

bit of mechanism they let down and form a roomy sixfoot bed with a pillow at the top. Eighteen or twenty persons can thus sleep in one carriage very comfortably.

Cracow was reached at ten o'clock, and sufficient time allowed for supper. Here the coupé I occupied lost its Russian occupants—a landowner's family from Kieff -and a countryman entered, Mr. Herbert Coxon, of the firm of James Coxon and Co., of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Mr. Coxon had conceived the idea of utilising his holidays by taking a trip to Constantinople and the Caucasus, to see whether he could not arrange for a direct supply of Oriental carpets, now so fashionable in England. Had I not met him at Cracow he would have probably gone to Constantinople first, but he changed his plans on hearing I was bound for Baku, and shaped his course for the Caucasus. Thanks to this circumstance, I had as far as the Caspian a companion, whose never failing good humour, hearty manner, and huge capacity for enjoyment gave a zest to the journey and prevented it from becoining dull. On his return home Mr. Coxon published an interesting little work, recounting his experiences, entitled, "Oriental Carpets: how they are made and conveyed to Europe, with a narrative of a journey to the East in search of them."

After an indifferent sleep, spoilt by the cramped position in which we were compelled to lie, we traversed the prosperous and picturesque city of Lemberg early in the morning, and about half-past ten o'clock reached Podvolotchisk, the frontier station. A brief halt, and then we crossed the Russian frontier and steamed slowly into Volotchisk, the first station on the Tsar's territory. This is not a very inviting place for one to make his first acquaintance with the Russian Empire. The station is small, with a wretched refreshment room to waste an hour in, no lavatory, and a very indifferent set of officials.

THE TERRIBLE RUSSIAN CENSOR.

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Not that the latter bothered us much. They confiscated two or three copies of the Newcastle Chronicle and other English papers belonging to Mr. Coxon, but this was an exceptional instance of adherence to the regulations, as I have crossed the frontier several times with my portmanteau half full of books, pamphlets, and papers, and even in this instance, after the newspapers had been taken from Mr. Coxon's trunk, the same official turned to mine, adjoining it, and passed its literary contents without any question.

When I was proceeding last year to Moscow to visit the exhibition, I took with me half-a-dozen copies of my "Russian Advance towards India," which embodied the conversations with Russian statesmen I had contributed a few months earlier to the Chronicle. On the way to Berlin I travelled with an Englishman who had never been in Russia, and another who had been born and bred there, and was a merchant of quite thirty years' standing at St. Petersburg. The conversation turning upon the severity of the Censor, the latter said to the former, “They take everything from you at the frontier that is printed. I go to England every spring for my holidays, and when I return I deliver at the frontier all my books tied up together in brown paper, and afterwards apply for them at the Censor Office at St. Petersburg; otherwise, any attempt at concealment would lead to confiscation." I pooh-poohed such elaborate precautions, on the grounds that by delivering the books in a packet to the officials one compelled them to adhere to old regulations, which are rapidly dropping into abeyance, and are only enforced in exceptional instances. When I added that I had six copies alone of a political work on Russia, with passages referring to Prince Krapotkin, the merchant earnestly begged me to follow his example, and painted all manner

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