Carpathians

“ For the enemy of men was sent to raise the mountains, and to make them terrible withal. The heaving earth burst upward, and there were peaks and crags to frown at the discontented race. The evil one took seven days to shape the Carpathians, beginning on a Sunday, on which he heaped up the most towering parts, and finishing off with the lesser Carpathians on the seventh day when his power was nearly spent ”

“ The aspect of the Carpathians is very different in winter: all the heights are covered with snow, and the narrow roads with mud and large stones, rolled in the midst of them by the torrents, so as to render them almost impassable ”

“ Transylvania is completely hemmed in by the South-Eastern Carpathians, besides being cut up by them, and its people are mountaineers, looking with disdain on the dwellers in the level plain. To them life without heights and hollows, and the constant sense of watchful grandeur given by rising peaks, would be tame and colourless. The mountaineer’s muscles are wrought to india-rubber by continual change of action. ”

“ He had fallen as one dead, and they had left him for such in the narrow defile, hastening themselves to leave the pine-forest far behind them, and put the range of the Carpathians between them and Moldavia, taking their own wounded with them, and plunging into the recesses of the woods, where all pursuit could be baffled, all detection defied. ”

“ The Ukrainian Carpathians are, to this day, one of the most thinly settled regions of the Ukraine, chiefly for the reason that it was always a passive region, which was not considered in political life. Great historical movements [224] hardly ever touched the Carpathians. For many centuries they remained almost devoid of human life. Hence, the Carpathians played hardly any part as a border defence of the Ukrainian state organizations. Mountain chains usually are of very great importance as a defence for individual tribes or entire races. ”

“ The Carpathians separate Hungary and Transylvania from Lower Austria, Moravia, Silesia, Galicia, Bukovina and Rumania, while its ramifications fill the whole northern part of Hungary, and form the quadrangular mass of the Transylvanian plateau. Unlike the other wings of the great central system of Europe, the Carpathians, which form the watershed between the northern seas and the Black Sea, are surrounded on all sides by plains, namely the great Hungarian plain on the south-west, the plain of the Lower Danube (Rumania) on the south, and the Galician plain on the north-east. ”

“ To the east, however, the Carpathians, extending from the 18th to 30th degrees of east longitude, lay directly under their eyes and could be examined in all the peculiarities of their distribution.
Barbican proposed a hypothesis regarding the formation of those mountains, which his companions thought at least as good as any other. Looking carefully over the Carpathians and catching occasional glimpses of semi-circular formations and half domes, he concluded that the chain must have formerly been a succession of vast craters. ”

“ Still, hardly one-third of the 1300 km. curve of the Carpathians belongs to Ukrainian national territory. Toward the west the Carpathians are inhabited by Poles and Slovaks; in the east and south by the Roumanians.
The boundary-posts of the Ukrainian territory extend in the west beyond the famous defile of Poprad. From the rounded peaks of the mountain country where the last Ukrainian villages lie, one sees rising at a very short distance the imposing range of the Tatra ”

“ The whole range of the Carpathians is characterized throughout its immensely long course by considerable breadth, forming at some places quite a hilly country and high plateaus, as, for instance, in Transylvania which, although properly belonging to Hungary, formerly enjoyed a sort of independence under its own name. ”

“ Built upon the foot-hills of the Carpathians, the city presents itself magnificently from afar, and its exterior is not belied by its finer quarters. Jews, Armenians, Russians, Tsigani, Tartars, and Magyars are numerously represented amongst its population, which is semi-Oriental in type. ”

“ But about the eastern feet of the Carpathians was a little northern people, the Slavs, which may one day fill the earth’s chronicle when Teuton has followed Greek and Roman into the inevitable tomb of warriors. Where these Slavs came from, and what was their precise kinship to the other northerners and to the Asiatic peoples, we do not confidently know. Some tens of thousands of years before the Christian Era the last spell of the Ice-Age had locked the north of Europe. ”

“ At length the road led up into the mountains, and when the sun rose they saw before them, as the mist rolled away, the lofty peaks of the Carpathians, beyond which lay home and friends.
A mountain hamlet received the weary riders with friendly, welcome and sympathy. Old and young, men and women, all had a kind word for them, and hastened to throw open their houses and their granaries. The horses were soon standing knee-deep in hay, while the peasants lent their aid in shoeing such as needed to be shod, and in mending broken harness. ”

“ The western and central Carpathians are much more accessible than the eastern Carpathians and the Transylvanian Mountains. The principal passes in the western Carpathians are: Strany, Hrozinkau, Wlara, Lissa and the Jablunka pass Passes. (1970 ft.) , the principal route between Silesia and Hungary, crossed by the Breslau-Budapest railway; and the Jordanow pass. In the central Carpathians are: the road from Neumarkt to Késmárk through the High Tatra, the Telgárt pass over the Králova Hola from the Poprad to the Gran, and the Tylicz pass from Bartfeld to Tarnow. ”

“ The north-western Carpathians are divided into several ranges; one separates Hungary from Moravia, Silesia, and Galicia. There are passes of great grandeur leading through the Carpathians at many points, and the way in which the heights rise 41sheer on the Hungarian side greatly adds to the impressiveness. A good deal of the mountains is thinly populated, and the villagers are often very primitive in their habits. ”

“ The town of Kiraly-haza is situated in a wide valley bounded by high mountains. The plain is left far behind, and we are once more under the shadow of the Carpathians. The heat of the day was intense, and there was not much in the immediate neighbourhood to tempt us out in the broiling sun, so we just got through the time as best we could. The food was [Pg 345] very bad and the wine execrable, an adulterated mixture not worthy of the name. This is a rare occurrence in Hungary, and it ought not to have been the case here, for there are good vineyards close to the town. ”

“ The Russian movement across the Carpathians was pressed with vigor and some of the fiercest fighting of the war resulted, as the combined German and Austrian troops resisted the Russian advance into Hungary. ”

“ The western Carpathians, which begin at the Porta Hungarica on the Danube, just opposite the Leitha Mountains, and extend to the Poprad river, are composed of four principal groups: the Little Carpathians (also called the Pressburg group) Ranges. with the highest peak Bradlo (2670 ft.) ; the White Carpathians or Miava group, with the highest peak Javornik (3325 ft.) , and the Zemerka (3445 ft.) ; the Beskid proper or western Beskid group, which extends from a little west of the Jablunka pass to the river Poprad, with the highest peaks, Beskid (3115 ft.) , Smrk (4395 ft.) ”

“ They are sometimes called Romans; were dominant in certain parts of the country in the tenth, and probably also the eleventh, century; assisted the Bulgari to drive the Hungarians over the Carpathians, and were even strong enough to make war upon the Eastern Empire about the end of the eleventh century. About that time ineffectual attempts were made to christianise them, and the last we hear of them is at the close of the thirteenth century, when they were associated with the Wallachs in the Carpathians, and probably gave their name to a district in which they were settled. ”

“ Thracia is the nation of the future in Eastern Europe. We are the only truly European race south of the Carpathians. The Mœsians are Slavs, the Dardanians half Roumis. Our blood is chiefly Latin, with a large Teutonic admixture. ”

“ It is a bit of poetic justice that the town of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, where my friend Schwab is making so much war material to be used against the Central Powers, was founded by fugitives, who, rebelling against oppression, left Moravia in search of liberty.
North of the Carpathians lies Galicia, a Polish country, with Lemberg and Krakow as its capitals, and in the eastern part the Ruthenians, a race identical with the Russians. These Ruthenians number upwards of four million. ”

“ This "mountain honey" sometimes reaches the London market, but, unfortunately, not with any regularity. It is most difficult to make these people practical in their trade dealings; and as for time, they must have come into the world before it was talked about. [Pg 182]
I made a short excursion into the Rothen Thurm Pass, the principal road across the Southern Carpathians, if we except the Tomöscher Pass from Kronstadt, which, owing to local circumstances, has become more important. The Rothen Thurm or Red Tower Pass is extremely picturesque. ”

“ I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. ”

“ At this point we must emphasize another anthropogeographical characteristic of the mountains. It is the general poverty of their inhabitants and their consequent desire, under compulsion, to seek expansion. The inhabitants of the Ukrainian Carpathians, about the middle of the 19th Century, were in a serious economic condition because of the small amount of productive ground. Need came first to the Lemkos, then to the Boikes, and last to the Hutzuls. Above all, it partly divested the mountain population of the then predominating industry of cattle raising. ”

“ The Carpathians, the Yaila and the Caucasus, are immovable boundary-walls, marking the southern borders of the Ukraine. On its wide surface there are only these narrow zones of mountain country. All the remaining territory of our fatherland is occupied by plateaus and plains. Upon these the Ukrainian nation has lived since the dawn of history. ”

“ The Balkans were a possession of the Byzantine Emperors. Later, Slavonic rulers, Bulgarian and Serbian were merely their imitators. The system of government, not centralised, but composed of isolated units in constant touch with a central power, preserved the ancient imperial character. In the Carpathians, the Empire was absent; no barbarian system of government was at hand to exercise the same power. Great cities had disappeared, the rural group was the sole surviving reality. The peasants lives in separate villages, each of them a patriarchal autonomy ”

“ In the first half of the ninth century they occupied a large extent of land stretching from the Carpathians to the upper waters of the Don and the Volga, and from the neighborhood of Lake Ladoga to a point about half-way between Kief and the Black Sea. All this population lived in villages which were governed in patriarchal fashion by the heads of families. ”

“ During the days in which the lads had been in the midst of the Carpathians, there had been only skirmishing between the opposing forces. Long range artillery duels raged incessantly; but there had been little work for the cavalry and infantry.
There had of course been several charges and counter charges, but the advantage rested with neither side. The Russian troops, in spite of the cold weather, made themselves comfortable in the trenches, wrapped to the chin in their heavy sheepskin garments. ”

“ It is not so easy to follow the group which passed north of the Carpathians, but they seem to have followed the line of sandy heaths across Galicia into Silesia, then some, probably, entered Hungary through the Moravian gate, while others pushed into Bohemia. These last found there people who were either refugees from the Tripolje area or folk closely allied to them. These people, who had been accustomed to a type of cord vase, had found in Bohemia bell-beakers, which had arrived there via Italy from Spain. From a combination of both types of ware they had evolved the northern beaker. ”

“ We are pressing back the enemy into the Carpathians, and there are halts in front of difficult hill positions. The advance through swamps of mud makes tremendous demands on the men, who have to lie for days in rifle pits full of water; at times a well-chosen and well-entrenched position holds the Russians at bay at a distance of a few hundred yards or less, in one case fifty, and yet they will [Pg 98] not go back. "Und auf den Carpathen sind die wege beschneit," often recur to me, these lines of one of the laziest of German student songs, which is a kind of renunciation of all effort. ”

“ I think that the Vistula may have been to them and the Slavonians what the Rhine was to the Gauls and Germans. The main question is how far can we bring them south? What justifies us in making them reach the Carpathians? At present we find them in Livonia, Courland, East Prussia, Vilna, and Grodno; but further south than Grodno nowhere; nowhere, at least, with the definite characteristics of name and language. Every inch that is given them south of Grodno must have its proper evidence to support it.
The Gothini of Tacitus are the first population that we may make Lithuanic. What says Tacitus? ”