Eastern Galicia

“ Galicia in Eastern Austria and Galicia in Western Spain mark their extreme borders towards the rising and setting sun.
Several centuries before the days of Ambigatos, in the older period of tribal confederation, was the [pg 104] coming of the Gaelic Sons of Milid to Ireland. Tradition places the date between three and four thousand years ago. Yet even after that long interval of isolation the resemblance between the Irish and continental Gaels is perfect; they are tall, solidly built, rather inclined to stoutness; they are fair-skinned, or even florid, easily browned by sun and wind. ”

“ About the middle of May matters quieted down in the eastern sector; the only fighting of importance consisted of severe artillery combats around Czernowitz and Kolomea. The issue of the conflict hung in the west with Von Mackensen's armies; fighting in the Bukowina at this stage became an unnecessary expenditure of strength and energy. The fate of eastern Galicia was being decided 140 miles away, on the banks of the River San, to which region we will now direct the reader's attention. ”

“ Krā ́kō, the old capital of Poland; stands on the left bank of the Vistula, in the Austrian crown land of Galicia.
[36] Ga-lish ́i-a, crown land of Austria, on the north side of the Carpathians. Its north-west frontier is formed by the Vistula, and the eastern parts are drained by the Dniester, Pruth, and Sereth. The country is rich in petroleum, from which the spirit is made by which motors are propelled. As motors are now so largely used in war, the possession of Galicia is a great advantage to Austria and Germany. ”

“ This is also a point we must always keep clearly in our minds, lest we imagine that we have only to move into Eastern Galicia for the people to rise against the Austrians—their eternal oppressors. If, on the contrary, we allow ourselves to be led away by the prospect of rounding off our possessions by means of natural boundaries, we shall certainly lay up endless trouble and expense for ourselves in the future. ”

“ Every step of land visible from Noya is cultivated, every peasant is a proprietor. Yes, I had begun to understand the devotion of the Gallegans to their beautiful native land. Who would not love passionately so sweet a birthplace? Even the Russian loves his steppe, where the scene never changes for thousands of miles. In Galicia, every nook, every crag, every peak, every valley has a distinctive character that is all its own, with its own peculiar beauty. Galicia’s cottage homes are of granite, they last for many generations ”

“ The men are well known all over Spain and Portugal as hardy, honest and industrious, but for the most part somewhat unskilled, labourers; indeed the word Gallego has come to be almost a synonym in Madrid for a “hewer of wood and drawer of water.” It is also used as a term of abuse, meaning “boor.” Agriculture engages the greater part of the resident population, both male and female; other industries, except the fisheries, are little developed. The largest town in Galicia is Corunna (pop. 1900, 43,971) ”

“ From points of natural wealth and beauty, Galicia is perhaps, of all countries, the least favoured of God. Shut out from the warm southern winds by the Carpathian mountains, and exposed to the northern blasts that sweep down from the broad steppes of Russia, the long and narrow stretch of Galician territory is probably the most inhospitable region in the western world. ”

“ Betanzos, an old-world town near Corunna, is associated with this thousand-year-old belief, and one of its quaint thoroughfares is called the Street of the Hundred Maidens.
Galicia is a land of hills. They are seen as soon as the coast is observed, and no journey can be made without beholding them. The hills are not high enough to be called mountains, but their altitude in many cases gives them a noble and dignified appearance. Richard Ford called Galicia the Switzerland of Spain ”

“ Nothing can more clearly give an idea of what primitive travelling in Galicia means than to watch the diligence from Ferrol, Finisterre, or Santiago drive up with jingling bells and cracking of whips, to put down weary passengers, and, the horses having been unharnessed, to see the oxen draw the coach to its departure-place. There are to be seen, too, the miradores, glazed frontages for which Corunna is celebrated. These vast stretches of windows protect the houses from the strong winds in winter and form bright and warm interior verandahs. ”

“ The Pruth, which also rises in the Carpathians, within the territory of Galicia, traverses its south-eastern corner and receives the Czeremosz, the boundary river towards Bukovina. There are few lakes in the country except mountain tarns; but considerable morasses exist about the Upper Dneister, the Vistula and the San, while the ponds or dams in the Podolian valleys are estimated to cover an area of over 200 sq. m. The most frequented mineral springs are the alkaline springs at Szczawnica and Krynica, the sulphur springs at Krzesowice, Szklo and Lubian, and the iodine springs at Iwonicz. ”

“ It is high time that we returned to the Eastern theatre of war. In Chapter XXXIV. of Volume II. you were told that at the end of September 1914 the Russians, after their crushing defeats of the Austrians, had advanced through Galicia to within a hundred miles of Cracow. At that time it seemed to us in the West that the Russian left would be almost certain to capture the great Galician fortress, and advance into Silesia and across the Carpathians towards Vienna within the next few weeks. Meanwhile we believed that the Russian right would be over the German frontier in full march for Berlin. ”

“ Foaming and tearing its way between dark gorges, broadening here and there into smiling little valleys, the mountains terraced almost to their distant summits with mere steps upon which crops are raised, the river passes through infinite phases of beauty. But the towns, and even villages, are few and far between in these wild regions, and the suave and beautiful inland bays, with the sweet valleys and soaring sierras that surround them, will form for visitors the main attractions of Galicia. ”

“ In the north-east corner of the Dual Monarchy, to the north of Transylvania, lies the large and important country of Galicia, a slice of the now vanished kingdom of Poland, wiped off the map by the three great powers surrounding her. Galicia is larger than Bohemia but lacks picturesqueness of scenery, and is the least known of all the provinces of the Austrian Empire. It is nearly all mountainous, the land falling down from the Carpathians, which form the southern boundary, toward Russia. The highest peaks are the Woman’s Mountain, 5648 feet, and the Waxmundska, 7189 feet. ”

“ The rivers of the northern versant, such as the Nera, are, like those of Asturias, for the most part short, rapid and subject to violent floods.
The coast-line of Galicia, extending to about 240 m., is everywhere bold and deeply indented, presenting a large number of secure harbours, and in this respect forming a marked contrast to the neighbouring province. The Eo, which bounds Galicia on the east, has a deep estuary, the Rivadeo or Ribadeo, which offers a safe and commodious anchorage. ”

“ There are many devoted Gallegans who compare their beloved territory to Finland, to Ireland and Hungary, and are never tired of saying that self-government alone could restore to her the prosperity that has forsaken her shores. They feel that as long as she is governed at a distance and by strangers she can never hope to raise her head.
Less troubled by invaders, less influenced by the Moors than the rest of Spain, Galicia at one time became the centre in which was propagated the purest of Spain’s lyric poetry ”

“ Of least interest were the dwellings of this peasantry,--villages neither frequent nor large, more properly mere heaps of gray huts built without order or plan of the slate-stone of which the province itself is chiefly formed, as was seen wherever the outer soil had been stripped away and the skeleton of the mountain laid bare. For all the character of the country abundance of rain and a pains-taking agriculture gave good crops. Galicia indeed supports, though in poverty, the densest population of the peninsula. ”

“ Galicia, 1, an old province (1,919) of Spain, formerly a kingdom in the NW. corner of it, fronting the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic; now divided into the four minor provinces, Coruña, Lugo, Orense, Pontevedra; the county is hilly, well watered, fertile, and favoured with a fine climate, but cultivated only very partially; some mining is carried on. 2, A crownland (6,607) in the NE. of Austria, between Russia and the Carpathians; the inhabitants are mainly Slavs, but there is a goodly number of Jews, Germans, Poles, &c. ”

“ From the day when they can support any burden at all the females of Galicia are taught that to them is given the conveyance of any article, however big and clumsy, which is not too big for a human being to grapple with. Nothing more astonishing can be seen in Galicia than the size and weight of some of the loads which the women carry on their heads, and frequently a woman hurries along under a burden which a Billingsgate or Covent Garden porter would refuse to have planted on his crown. ”

“ Another important river is the Eo, which, rising in Galicia above Salvatierra, divides this province from that of Asturias, and is the natural boundary line between Lugo and Oviedo. Galicia has upon her coast some of the finest harbours in Europe. Vigo, for one, has often been described as the finest natural harbour in the world; while Ferrol, once so famous as the Arsenal of Spain, is likely to become ere long, in the hands of English shipbuilders, one of the world’s greatest dockyards, and to supply ironclads to all the nations. ”

“ Two of Spain’s greatest living archæologists, Villa-Amil y Castro and Lopez Ferreiro, are sons of Galicia; and “the best authoress that Spain has produced during the present century,” [308] Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán, is Galicia’s daughter. So much for the stupidity of the Gallegans.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Fare thee well, Galicia! Thou art a land where railways have preceded roads, and where motor-cars have arrived before trains; thou art a land whose peasants are oppressed by bad government, usury, and their own crass ignorance ”

“ The constant drain of the best and strongest of the male population of Galicia by emigration is the saddest phase of Galician life. Something like twenty thousand Gallegos emigrate to the Argentine Republic every year. They are usually men of the soil, crowded out by a vicious system of taxation and the infinite subdivision of the soil amongst a multitude of peasants owning their tiny crofts. The soil and climate of Galicia are the best in Spain and the people are by far the most laborious ”

“ The whole scene is wonderful and impressive, and the country has the great merit of being almost untravelled by and unknown to ordinary tourists.
From Sobroso's solitude you walk back to the high road where your motor-car or Spanish cab awaits you and resume your journey, or, being untroubled by thoughts of time or vehicles, walk onward in the strangely fascinating twilight of Galicia. You pass the peasant women, and they smile and murmur "Adios," and instinctively you raise your hat in recognition of the salutation. ”

“ Lady visitors are requested to wear no hats except when attending Mass. The scenery of the surrounding mountains and valleys is very beautiful, and there are some exquisite drives, one being to Castello Mos, the mediæval castle which I have described in my chapter on Pontevedra.
And now a last word about the Gallegan women. I have said that the women of Galicia work in the fields like men, and that most of the agricultural labour is necessarily performed by them, seeing that the men emigrate in such numbers. ”

“ South America, with its wide prairies under a merciless sun, its wild and savage mountains where one may travel for days together without finding a sign of human life, is very different from populous Galicia with its gentle, smiling scenery, its mountains whose slopes are veritable gardens, its innumerable springs, its rias and its rivers, its vines and its orchards. ”

“ The town looked like a line of conservatories, and I remembered the proverb about people who dwell in glass houses, and wondered whether it had originated in Coruña. These glass fronts are sun traps; they take the place of fireplaces in cold weather. The bright, genial Spanish sun shines through the glass and fills the rooms with pleasant warmth even on the coldest days, when the ground outside is covered with frost. There glass is the only heating apparatus with which the houses of Galicia are supplied. ”

“ Geographically, racially and socially, Galicia is a part of Russia. Galicia is a preponderatingly agricultural land and possesses the densest agricultural population in Europe. Modern industry is relatively little developed, its place being held to a great extent by the domestic system of industry. The contrast between the large and small estates is sharper here than perhaps in any other section of Europe. The Polish nobility, in whose hands the large estates are mostly found, are the ruling social and political, as well as economic, power in Galicia. ”

“ Tuy, the first city of Galicia, is a relic of a past age. Its tortuous narrow streets, mere alleys a few feet wide, are like those of the prehistoric Celtic city of Citania in Portugal: deep channels worn in the living rock and patched where necessary with flat slabs. The city itself is as silent as the grave, and the frowning old castle-cathedral, with its tinkling bell calling to worship, almost alone indicates the presence of the living. ”