SCENE ON THE RAILWAY.
The train rolled away from Granitsa in the direction of Warsaw, which was the next point of destination of our friends. The country through which they travelled was not particularly interesting; it was fairly though not thickly settled, and contained no important towns on the line of the railway, or any other object of especial interest. Their English acquaintance said there were mines of coal, iron, and zinc in the neighborhood of Zombkowitse, where the railway from Austria unites with that from eastern Germany. It is about one hundred and eighty miles from Warsaw; about forty miles farther on there was a town with an unpronounceable name, with about ten thousand inhabitants, and a convent, which is an object of pilgrimage to many pious Catholics of Poland and Silesia. A hundred miles from Warsaw they passed Petrikau, which was the seat of the ancient tribunals of Poland; and then, if the truth must be told, they slept for the greater part of the way till the train stopped at the station in the Praga suburb of Warsaw, on the opposite bank of the Vistula.
SHUTES FOR LOADING COAL ON THE RAILWAY.
As they neared the station they had a good view of Warsaw, on the heights above the river, and commanded by a fortress which occupies the centre of the city itself. Alighting from the train, they surrendered their passports to an official, who said the documents would be returned to them at the Hôtel de l'Europe, where they proposed to stop during their sojourn within the gates of Warsaw. Tickets permitting them to go into the city were given in exchange for the passports, and then they entered a rickety omnibus and were driven to the hotel.
It was late in the afternoon when they climbed the sloping road leading into Warsaw, and looked down upon the Vistula and the stretch of low land on the Praga side. Fred repeated the lines of the old verse from which we have already quoted, and observed how well the scene is described in a single couplet:
"Warsaw's last champion from her heights surveyed,
Wide o'er the fields a waste of ruin laid."
Laid desolate by many wars and subjected to despotic rule, the country around Warsaw bears little evidence of prosperity. Many houses are without tenants, and many farms are either half tilled or wholly without cultivation. The spirit of revolution springs eternal in the Polish breast, and the spirit of suppression must be equally enduring in the breast of the Russian. It is only by the severest measures that the Russians can maintain their control of Poland. A Polish writer has well described the situation when he says, "Under a cruel government, it is Poland's duty to rebel against oppression; under a liberal government, it is her duty to rebel because she has the opportunity."