On the outside of the Carpathian curve stretches a hill country of varying breath, the sub-Carpathian hill-country, in Ukrainian: Pidhirye or Pidkarpatye. The mountain-edge of the Carpathian, which is at all points very distinct, rises steeply over the low-hill country at the foot, along an extended line in the neighborhood of the cities of Peremishl, Sambir, Drohobich, Striy, Kolomia. The Carpathian rivers leave the mountains by way of funnel-shaped valleys, bordered by boulder terraces, and spread their alluvial mounds over the low hill country. Wide stretches of meadow accompany the river courses; fields and woodland lie at a distance. The sub-Carpathian hill-country is built up of miocene gray clays which, along the edge of the Carpathians, contain an enormous treasure of petroleum, [[33]]ozokerite, kitchen salt and potash salts. Boulders lie on the clay, not only along the rivers, but also on the hilltops—traces of old watercourses, which transported Carpathian and northern rubble-stone toward the east in the direction of the Dniester. The yellowish cover of loam and loess lies over the whole, and its surface-layer, abounding in vegetable soil, is, in places, very fertile.
The sub-Carpathian hill country reaches to the two sub-Carpathian plains in the north—the Vistula and the Dniester Plain. Only along the European main divide a tongue of hill-country projects in the direction of Lemberg. In the glacial period, watercourses of great volume flowed directly across this hill-country divide, which, as might be expected, is now completely cleft by the bifurcation of the Vishnia, depositing considerable masses of rubble-stone and sand. Thru destruction of forests, the sands have become subject to wind action and dreary landscapes of sand-dunes have been formed.
Only the southeastern reaches of the Vistula Plain, extending along the San River to Peremishl are part of Ukrainian territory. The low loam bags, which lie between sandy and swampy valleys of the San, form the only rises of ground in this plain, which borders in the northeast on the spurs of the Rostoch.
The Dniester Plain extends in a broad ribbon along the river from the place where it leaves the mountains to the delta of the Striy. Its western part is a single great swamp region, a one-time large lake. The rivers flow on flat dams, and when the melting snows come and the rains of early summer, they overflow their banks and flood the swampy plains far and near. In some years the swamp region changes into a lake for days and weeks. In the dry season only a few swamp lakes remain, but the entire region remains a swamp and produces only a poor sour hay. Settlements lie only on the high banks of the rivers. [[34]]
The eastern part of the Dniester Plain extends beyond the great alluvial mounds of the Striy River, and then reaches over into the broad valley of the Dniester, which ends in the Podolian Plateau at the point where the river enters. The eastern Dniester Plain is not very swampy, and only in places do ravines, swamps, and old river beds accompany the river course. For the most part pretty meadows, fields and woods lie on the thick sub-layer of rubble-stone and river-loam.
If the Carpathians represent a primeval section of Ukrainian ground, the mountain ranges of Crimea and the Caucasus were entirely strange to the Ukrainians not so very long ago. How many Ukrainian slaves, in the time of Tartar oppression, cursed the rocky-wall of the Yaila which separated them from their beloved home. How discontented was the enslaved remainder of the Zaporogs when transported to the Western Caucasus.
Now the conditions are quite changed. The great colonizing movement of the Ukrainians touched the Yaila as much as twenty years ago, and has extended the frontiers of the Ukrainian settlements along the outer mountains of the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea. And the once strange, hostile mountain-worlds have opened their doors to Ukrainian colonization.
The Yaila Mountains of Crimea are, in comparison with the Carpathians, a small mountain system hardly 150 km. long and 35 km. wide. They lie in three parallel ranges, separated by longitudinal valleys, along the southeast shores of the peninsula. The northern declivities of all the ridges are gently sloping, the southern ones steep. The southern main range exceeds a height of 1500 m. with its peaks, Chatirdagh, Roman-chosh, and Demir Kapu. This main ridge, which declines toward the sea in steep precipices, is flat and rocky on top, strewn with rock-craters; [[35]]it bears the name Yaila and serves as a lean mountain pasture. Deep gorges cut the rough surface of the summit and divide it into single table mountains.