Olomouc

“ And so Bohemia, for all her exterior of gracious courtesy, is bitter and hard at heart; a people of a passionate, thwarted patriotism; a people that has suffered and been degraded, but that has never for a moment forgotten. Prague is an expression of all this; in her sullen, gloomy architecture; in the persistence of national types and characteristics; and peculiarly in the wild, reckless Moldau, which visualizes the traditional, savage intolerance that is bred in the bone of the fatalistic Slav. ”

“ Omaha cannot claim you. There is Scotch blood in your veins, Maisrie—the oldest in the land; and you must see Dunfermline town, where the King sate 'drinking the blood-red wine'; and you must see Stirling Castle, and Edinburgh, and Holyrood, and Melrose Abbey. ”

“ It was one of the first to breathe of the mighty progress of civilization in our great West; and, like all of our growing Western cities, is eminently an industrial center—meat packing, breweries, smelters, machine shops, brick yards,—and it is an important railway center. Because of all of this, it continually beckons through its portals a vast number of the army of the seekers after work. Omaha, too, boasts of its culture and humanity, and of a social distinction around which cluster names which in the years to come will be intimately connected with the history of the country. ”

“ Nepomuk Day in Prague is something you must see to understand. The streets are a dense mass of gay revellers and happy pilgrims from dawn till midnight. All the quaint national costumes of Bohemia light up the beflagged and beflowered thoroughfares. All day long the merry lads and lasses sing Bohemian songs, and dance Bohemian dances in the streets, the squares, and the parks. At night fireworks blaze up from all parts of the town, and a million extra lights make the glorious city on the Moldau a never-to-be-forgotten spectacle. ”

“ From a buttress which projects clear of the trees, that cover all the hill-side with a broad mass of foliage, you have a wide prospect. Greater part of the city from the Jews' quarter to the Wissehrad lies beneath the eye as a panorama. The Moldau—breaking from between low hills, with here and there a Kahn floating, or a long, narrow raft drifting to the gap in the dam—flows past in a grand curve between towers and palaces, wretched 125 hovels and stately churches, and onwards round the hills below to join the Elbe. ”

“ Here nature intended, in the development of the country, a great city. Where the next one will be in the South-west is not likely to be determined until the Indian Territory is open to settlement. To the north, Omaha, with reference to Nebraska and the West, possesses many similar advantages, and is likewise growing with great vigor and solidity. Its situation on a slope rising from the river is commanding and beautiful, and its splendid business houses, handsome private residences, and fine public schools give ample evidence of the intelligent enterprise that is directing its rapid growth. ”

“ Olave, which with All Hallows, Barking, escaped the Great Fire, and stands as it stood in Milton’s life. The tourist must time his visit to it on a week day to the noon hour, as, unlike All Hallows, Barking, it is not open all day.
The monastery of the Crutched Friars must have covered in ancient days a large part of the parish of this church. Its dimensions are of the smallest—it is only fifty-four feet long. Its name takes us back to the times of the Danish settlement, for St. Olave is but the corruption of St. Olaf, the Norwegian saint who was the martyred king of the Northmen. ”

“ I have not much to tell about Omaha, for I did not make any long stay in the place, being anxious to get on and finish my journey. It was now my fifth day in the train, having come a distance of 1912 miles from San Francisco; and I had still another twenty-four hours' travel before me to Chicago. There was nothing to detain me in Omaha. It is like all places suddenly made by railway, full of bustle and business, but by no means picturesque. How can it be? The city is only seventeen years old. Its principal buildings are manufactories, breweries, warehouses, and hotels. ”

“ In the city of Chester, on the northern frontier of Wales, there is to be found in the southern outskirts, opposite the old castle and close to the river Dee, a church and parish which still bear the name of St. Olave. By the church runs a street called “St. Olave’s Lane.” In the north-west part of York there is likewise a St. Olave’s church, said to be the remains of a monastery founded by the powerful Danish Jarl Siward, who was himself buried there in the year 1055. There can be no doubt that similar churches dedicated to St. ”

“ Omaha—Homestead Land—Coming Onto the Plains—Cold Winds—Platte Valley—Republican Forks—Fort Wallace—Big Sandy—Old Battle-Ground—Arkansas Valley—Irrigation Farming.
The great emigrant land of which we had heard so much had at last been reached, and the din from the streets of the great western exchange was borne to our ears upon the evening breeze. Omaha is built upon the side of a large hill, and is quite a pretty place; and being the wholesale city for many miles of the surrounding country, business is lively, and the people say hard times never reach them. ”

“ Omaha is built in part upon the low bottom lands which border the river, and which may at any time be menaced by the swollen and angry stream, unless precautions are taken, in the building of high and substantial stone levees along the river front. The town lies also in part upon the table lands beyond, and is extending to the bluffs which rise still further away. Its business is chiefly confined to the lower portion, where magnificent blocks attest the prosperity of the city. ”

“ Below the Hradschin, between it and the Laurenz Berg, a wooded height laid out partly as public gardens, lies the Kleinseite, a quarter of the city the aspect of which impresses one as semi-oriental, owing to the copper-covered domes, minaret-like pinnacles, and other Eastern types of church architecture to be seen. The Moldau flows through Prague with a semi-circular sweep. The view of the river from the bridge, towards the north, i.e., down stream, terminates with the lofty bank, above which lies the military exercise ground. Up stream the view is more varied and interesting. ”

“ Olaf’s Church, in London, he should be healed. How he got there, I cannot tell you; but he did, and he was crawling along, and the boys were laughing at him, as he asked them which was St. Olaf’s Church, when a man, dressed in blue and carrying an axe on his shoulder, said, ‘Come with me, for I have become [227] a countryman of yours.’ So he took up the cripple and carried him through the streets, and placed him on the steps of the church. Much difficulty had the poor man to crawl up the steps ”

“ The Catholics have a seminary for young ladies and a boys' parochial school. The State Institute for the Deaf and Dumb is near the city.
HIGH SCHOOL, OMAHA, NEBRASKA.
[443]
CHAPTER XXIV. A HALT AT OMAHA.
Omaha, the capital of Douglas County, the chief commercial city and metropolis of Nebraska, is the half-way station across the Continent. It is aptly called the "Gate City," seeming, as it does, a sort of opening to the great railroads, the great waterways, and the whole fascinating great beyond of western enterprise and western commerce. ”

“ Of the total population 71·36% were Slavs, who were scarcely distinguishable from their Bohemian neighbours. The name of Czech, however, is usually reserved for the Bohemians, while the Slavs of Moravia and West Hungary are called Moravians and Slovacs. The Germans form 27·9% of the population, and are found mostly in the towns and in the border districts. Fully 95% of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the archbishop of Olmütz and the bishop of Brünn ”

“ Olave’s appears to have been always “in low water,” a starving rather than a living; for in 1393, on account of its poverty, the parish was temporarily united with St. Mary’s. Down to the seventeenth century, however, it eked out a precarious existence; but after the close of the civil war, the ordinary services of the church were discontinued for about a century; when they were again resumed, until the final extinction of St. Olave’s as a distinct parish, in 1841. In that year the Church was finally closed, and the parish united to that of St. ”

“ Omaha is booming as it never was before. Twenty years ago, when Congress granted a charter to the Union Pacific Railroad Company, the charter stated that the east bank of the Missouri River should be the eastern terminus of the road, but as there was no bridge over the river, the work of building the road naturally commenced on the west side of the river, and this gave Omaha a start that it has improved upon ever since. ”

“ Speed apart, there is little to complain of with the Moldau; it is broad and of a pleasant deep blue, and the beauty it supplies to the setting of the city is supplemented by the importance of its traffic, the amusements on its many little wooded islands, and the delights of its boating and bathing. In a word, it is a noble stream—and none the less Bohemian, perhaps, for being a little proud and head-strong. ”

“ The wish was realized, for the route lies through a pretty country, the most populous and industrious part of Bohemia. It is heavy uphill work soon after leaving Tetschen, but the view from the top over the valley of the Elbe repays the labour, and rivals that from the Milleschauer. A little farther, and the prospect opens in the opposite direction, across a great wave, as it seems, of cones, ridges, scars, and rounded heights, sprinkled with spires and hamlets—a cheerful scene that invites you onwards.
At every mile you see and hear more and more of the signs of industry. ”

“ ULM, an ancient and important commercial town in Wiirtemberg, and an imperial fortress of the first class, is situated on the left bank of the Danube, in a fertile plain at the foot of the Swabian Alps, 45 miles to the south-east of Stuttgart and 63 miles to the north-west of Munich. The town, quaintly built with narrow and confined streets, still preserves the dignified and old-fashioned appearance of an ancient imperial town, and contains many mediaeval buildings, both of historic and of artistic interest. ”

“ These two enterprises, the cattle killing and packing and ore-reducing, together with large railway shops, constitute the chief industrial interests of Omaha, and, for the rest, the city depends upon the extensive farming and grazing country lying for five hundred miles between her and the Rocky Mountains. As they prosper, so does Omaha; as they are depressed, so is she. And only one thing, one catastrophe does Omaha fear, far beyond words to tell—the fierce, hot winds that every few years come blowing across Nebraska from the furnace of the Rocky Mountains’ alkali deserts. ”

“ It is probable, therefore, that before many years have passed, big though Omaha may now be—and it already contains 20,000 inhabitants—the advantages of its position will tend greatly to swell its population, and perhaps to render it in course of time one of the biggest cities of the West. ”

“ The basin is everywhere heaving with undulations, patched and striped with firs and the lines of trees along the highways, while a few ponds gleam in some of the deepest hollows. A few widely scattered cottages, or the white walls of a farmstead, dot the green surface of the fields; and such is the general character of the scenery all the way from the Erzgebirge to Prague—indeed, all the central region of Bohemia. One league, with small differences, is but a repetition of the other. ”

“ Omaha henceforth will be as safe for its citizens, and as safe for the visitors within its gates, as any city in the land. Its respectable and law-abiding people, comprising 99 per cent of the population, will see to that. ”

“ Omaha can scarcely fail to become the greatest city west of St. Louis. Founded but a generation ago, its business is already stupendous, though it is really but a beginning of what it promises to be in the future. As Iowa, Nebraska, and the States and Territories still further to the northwest, become more thickly settled, with their resources developed, it will form their natural commercial centre, to which they will look for supplies, and where they will find a market or a port for their produce and manufactures. ”

“ The centre of Bohemia, rich agricultural land, presents comparatively little which, apart from historical associations, would tempt the mere tourist, but Moravia, in the south-east, affords endless pleasing combinations of river, wood, and hill, and is not destitute of either gory battlefield or picturesque castle. ”

“ At the present time, to the five millions of inhabitants in Bohemia, there are nineteen hundred parish churches, while in the time of Charles there were twenty-three hundred, and the population was only about three millions. Not only did the churches increase in number, but also in wealth, which was especially the case with the higher ones. Thus the Archbishop of Prague had the revenues coming from four hundred villages and some dozen cities, which enabled him to hold a court equal in magnificence to some of the princes of the empire. ”

“ Among the public buildings are a town hall, court house, corn exchange, and churches of various denominations, as well as a synagogue.
The lordship of Almelo belonged to the lords of Heeckeren, who acquired the barony of Rechteren by marriage in 1350 and the countship of Limpourg in 1711. The elder branch of the mediatized house of Rechteren-Limpourg is still established at Almelo; the younger, German branch, at Markt Einersheim in Bavaria. ”