onqueror, and were compelled to adopt German habits of life,
Silesia became the centre of a quiet, peaceful colonization, which
spread itself far and wide over, the frontier towards the east.

How powerful a passion the love of wandering became in the German
people at this period, is a point we will not attempt to enter upon.
The expeditions of the Hohenstaufens into Italy, and still more the
Crusades, had roused and excited the masses, who became restless and
eager for foreign adventure; and the life of the peaceful labourer in
Germany was full of danger, indeed almost insupportable. Pious monks,
enterprising nobles, even princely brides were to be seen knocking at
the doors of their peasantry, and trying to induce the young labourers
to follow them to Poland. But little is known concerning this
emigration; we do not even know from what province the great stream of
Silesian wanderers flowed. There are grounds for thinking that most of
them came from Magdeburg, Thuringia, and perhaps Franconia. There is no
mention of it in the ancient manuscripts or chronicles; the only
evidence concerning it might perhaps be found in the Silesian and
Thuringian dialects, but even these have not been sufficiently
investigated. We have however more knowledge as to who invited the
Germans into the country of the Oder. It was the Sclavonian dukes of
the Piasten family, who were then rulers of the country.

At the end of the twelfth century a race of ancient Polish princes
resided on their paternal inheritance in Silesia; inferior to these
were numerous Sclave nobles, and below them again a much oppressed and
enslaved people. The country was thinly populated, and poor both in
capital and labour. The heights of the Riesenberge and the plains of
the Oder were clothed with wood; between them stretched out miles of
desolate heath. Herds of wild boars laired in the swamps, bears picked
the wild honey from the hollow trunks of the trees, and the elks fed on
the branches of the pine; the beaver made its home beside the rivers,
the fish eagle hovered about the ponds, and above him soared the noble
falcon. The beaver and falcon were more valuable in the eyes of the
princes than their serfs. The peasants looked from their miserable huts
with horror on the lords of the water and air, for the preservation of
which they had to pay exorbitant penalties. What the earth yielded
freely they had to collect for their rigorous masters and the Church.
They had