ass through broad valleys or basins, once
the beds of great lakes, whose rich, alluvial soil give forth abundant
crops of cereals. Here, too, flows the Niemen, 500 miles in length,
watering a basin 40,000 square miles in area and separating Poland
from Lithuania. It advances northward in a great, winding pathway,
between limestone hills covered with loam or amid forests, its
banks rising to high eminences in places, past ruined castles built
in the Middle Ages. In the yellowish soil along its banks grow
rich crops of oats, buckwheat, corn, and some rye. Naturally such
a section would be thickly populated, not only on account of the
fertile soil, but because the Niemen, like the Vistula, is one of
the country's means of communication and transportation. As many
as 90,000 men earn their livelihoods in navigating the steamers
and freight barges passing up and down this great waterway. At
Yurburg the Niemen enters East Prussia on its way to the Baltic.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLII

THE STRATEGIC VALUE OF RUSSIAN POLAND

It is in the southern part of Russian Poland, among the foothills
of the Carpathians, that the armies come into possession of its
mineral resources, a fact which will have some influence on the
German military movements in this region. Up in the Kielce hills
copper has been mined for 400 years, though the value of these
mines has decreased on account of the much greater quantity found
in America. A hundred years ago the Kielce mines produced nearly
4,000 tons of copper a year. Brown iron ore is also found here
in deposits 40 per cent pure, while there are also veins of zinc
sometimes 50 feet thick, yielding ore of 25 per cent purity. Sulphur,
one of the ingredients for the manufacture of explosives, is found
at Czarkowa in the district of Pinczow. In the southwest, in Bedzin
and Olkuz, there are coal deposits about 200 square miles in area.
In the southern districts wheat is also grown in some abundance.

The military value of this country is further enhanced by political
conditions. Like the greater part of Galicia to the southward, it
is peopled by the Poles, who form one of the important branches
of the great Slavic family. At one time Poland was a kingdom whose
territory and possessions spread from the Carpathians up to the
Baltic and far into the center of Russia, ruling its subject peoples
with quite as much rigor as the Poles have themselves been ruled
by Russia and