Minerals.—Its mineral wealth is not surpassed in any European country; it is only lately that Russia has exceeded it in the production of gold and silver. Mining has been an important pursuit in Austria for centuries, and has been encouraged and promoted by the government. Gold is found chiefly in Hungary and Transylvania, and in smaller quantity in Salzburg and Tyrol. The same countries, along with Bohemia, yield silver. Quicksilver is found in Hungary, Transylvania, Styria, and Carinthia. Copper is found in many districts, tin in Bohemia alone. Zinc [529] is mined chiefly in Cracow and Carinthia. The most productive lead mines are in Carinthia. Iron is found in almost every province of the monarchy, though Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola are chief seats. Antimony is confined to Hungary; arsenic, cobalt, sulphur, and graphite are produced in various parts of the empire.
The useful earths and building-stones are to be had in great profusion; likewise marble, gypsum, chalk, etc. Rock-salt exists in immense beds on both sides of the Carpathians, chiefly at Wieliczka and Bochnia in Galicia, and in the county of Marmaros in Hungary, and in Transylvania. Salt is also made at state salt-works by evaporating the water of salt-springs. There are inexhaustible deposits of coal. Austria has abundance of valuable mineral springs; about sixteen hundred are enumerated, some of them of European reputation, as the sulphur baths of Baden in Lower Austria, the saline waters of Carlsbad, Marienbad, Franzensbad, Teplitz, etc., all in Bohemia.
Manufactures are most developed in the German portion of Bohemia, in the districts round Vienna, in Moravia and Austrian Silesia, and in Styria. The Magyar countries are far behind in this respect and Dalmatia and Bukowina have scarcely any manufactures at all. Weaving employs the largest number of hands; next in number come the metal, stone, glass and wood workers, then the workers in leather. Iron and steel goods are made in the Alps of Styria. Bohemia has a world-wide reputation for the manufacture of various kinds of glass, and the Tyrol has long been noted for the production of carved woodwork. Paper is made chiefly in Bohemia and in or near Vienna.
Cities and Towns.—The most important cities are the capital, Vienna, and eight other towns above one hundred thousand (Budapest, Trieste, Prague, Lemberg, Gratz, Cracow, Brün, Szegedin), and twenty-two others above fifty thousand.
Vienna (Ger. Wien, pron. Veen), the capital of the Austrian Empire, and (jointly with Budapest) of the dual monarchy, is situated in Lower Austria, on the Danube Canal, a south branch of the Danube, here joined by the small river Wien.
Chief Divisions.—Vienna proper consists of the Inner City and ten suburban districts surrounding it, formerly encircled by fortifications known as the Lines, which in 1892 were replaced by a boulevard, known as the Ringstrasse. The central point of the city is the Graben, a short street in the center of the inner city, a pleasant, well-built avenue, of greater width than usual for streets within the Ring. The Stadt is the fashionable quarter, where are the imperial palace, the residences of many of the nobility, the leading churches, museums, galleries, etc., and the most elegant shops.
PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, VIENNA
The Ringstrasse is perhaps not surpassed in its architectural magnificence by any other street in Europe. Among the most conspicuous of the public buildings upon it are the Bourse; the University, founded in 1365 and renowned throughout the world as a medical school, has a teaching staff of five hundred and some ten thousand students; the new Rathhaus in the Gothic style, with a tower three hundred and twenty-eight feet high; the new Court Theater, the extensive and splendid Houses of Parliament; the Palace of Justice; the twin Imperial Museums of natural history and of art; the Imperial Opera House, sumptuous without and within; the Commercial Academy; the Palace of Archduke William; the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, and the School for Art Industry.
Other institutions and buildings of interest are the Polytechnic Institute (with a Technological Museum); the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, founded by Maria Theresa; the splendid Public Hospital, the largest in Europe, and the Josephinum, a medical college founded in 1784, containing a large collection of anatomical models, etc.