As a contrast to this story, related on the authority of Baron Uklanski, himself a Pole, the reader is presented with the following fact, which happened in Galicia, after the cruel partition:—
A peasant with his wife and children, belonging to the estate of the Starost Bleski, having fled into Austrian Poland, the Starost assembled a party of horsemen and carried off his serf, inflicted on him a hundred stripes and threw him into a dungeon. The emperor Joseph II., having been informed of this circumstance, caused his ministers to demand reparation from the king of Poland, who replied, that it did not depend on him, but on his permanent council. The emperor, not satisfied with this evasive answer, sent a party of two hundred dragoons to bring back both the Starost and the serf to Zamoic, where they were taken before an Austrian court of justice. The Starost was sentenced to pay a thousand crowns as an indemnity to the peasant, and a fine of five thousand to the Austrian exchequer. The hundred blows which he had inflicted on the peasant were repaid to him on his own person, and he was sent back to his own estate with all due respect.
Galicia, like Poland in general, abounds in wood, but stone, particularly freestone, is very scarce. Hence log huts are the general habitations of the peasantry. Architecture of course is still in its infancy. Every peasant in fact is his own mason and carpenter. Provided with a hatchet, he enters the nearest wood, fells as many trees as he wants, carries them to the site of his future dwelling, and splits each trunk into two beams. Four large stones mark the corner of an oblong square, and constitute the base upon which the hut is raised, by placing the beams in horizontal layers, with the flat sides inward; a sort of mortice being cut in each about half a foot from the end to receive the connecting beams. A kind of cage is thus constructed, usually about twelve feet by six, and moss is thrust between the logs to exclude the wind and rain. Two openings are left, one for the door, and the other, with the aid of a few panes of glass or a couple of sheets of oiled paper, forms a window. At one of the corners within are placed four upright posts, round which are entwined some twigs covered with mud or clay to form a square area, in which is built an oven of the same materials; and this, when hard and dry, serves the peasant for kitchen, chimney, stove and bed. The roof is closed in with rafters and twigs bedaubed with a thick coating of clay, and covered over with a close warm thatch extending over both gable ends. To finish this rude hut, the walls are sometimes extended a few feet in a still rougher style, to form a sort of vestibule, which serves also for carthouse or stable, and occasionally a second is added to serve as a barn. In the whole building there is perhaps scarcely a bolt, lock, hinge or any article of metal. Yet this is the dwelling of a Polish serf, and contains himself and his family and all his goods and chattels.
If the proprietor happens to be a little more affluent, his hut may contain an oven of glazed earthenware, and two bed-rooms with boarded floors, the walls whitewashed, and the doors secured with locks. If he be a Jew, the house is still larger; the roof better, and covered with shingles instead of thatch; the windows are a degree wider; and if he be an innkeeper, there is a long stable, with a coach-entrance at each end, which serves for barn, stable and cow-house.
The gentry give to their wooden house greater capacity, and a form a little more symmetrical. The walls within are perhaps stuccoed and washed with distemper colours, and externally plastered and whitewashed. The door of entrance occupies the centre and is covered with a rude porch, raised on four posts, and the front may contain three or four windows.
Such are the elementary parts of a Polish village, and nothing under heaven can be more miserable, dirty and wretched, than the whole assemblage externally as well as internally. All the inns in Galicia are kept by Jews, and both these and the post-houses are always situated in the public squares, which occupy the centre of every town. These squares are also the market-places for horned cattle, and have never been cleansed since their first formation: hence they are absolute quagmires of filth, the putrid effluvia from which are almost insufferable.
Happy, says Dr. Neale, is the traveller, the dimensions of whose carriage admit of his occupying it during the night! what abominations will he not escape! He relates, that though his companion and himself carried with them into these Jewish inns fur skins of their own to sleep on, yet the noisome smells from the damp earthen floors were frequently so powerful and disgusting as to keep them awake; and there were a thousand other nameless annoyances more easily imagined than described.
From the centre of the roof of these houses is always suspended a large brass chandelier, with seven branches: this is the sabbath lamp, which is regularly lighted every Friday evening at sun-set, when all the fires are carefully extinguished, and not re-kindled till the same hour the next evening. Underneath it stands a long table soiled with grease, occupying the middle of the apartment; around it are ranged several wooden benches, with one or two rotten chairs, and a cushion stuffed with hay. In the huts of the peasants a sort of shovel, slung from the roof is loaded with tallow: a lock of flax is placed upon it, and being lighted serves for a lamp.
The best food to be obtained at these inns is nearly as disgusting to strangers as the lodging they afford; and the only thing to be commended in Galicia is the state of the high-roads; these are excellent, of a good breadth, well levelled, and kept in admirable repair. But these, and every thing else that is not absolutely abominable, are the creation of the Austrian government; for previously to the first partition of Poland, in 1772, they were as miserable as the inns.
In no country in Europe have the Jews obtained such firm footing as in Poland, where Casimir the Great, at the instigation of his Jewish mistress, Esther, took them, four centuries ago, into his especial favour and protection. Enjoying privileges and immunities which they possess in no other region, with opportunities of engaging deeply in traffic and accumulating immense fortunes; masters of all the specie and most of the commerce of Poland; mortgagees of the land, and sometimes masters of the glebe—the Jewish interlopers appear to be more the lords of the country then even the Poles themselves.