Towns, large
and small, occur more frequently than in Russia, and while some are
rich and industrial, others--we may say the great majority--are
poor and squalid, affording no accommodation that would render
possible the visit of even the least fastidious traveller.
Consequently we confine ourselves to Warsaw, which we take on our way
by rail to or from St. Petersburg or Moscow. Founded in the Twelfth
Century, and, during the Piast period, the seat of the appanaged
Dukes of Masovia, Warszawa, replaced Cracow as the residence of the
Polish kings and therefore as the capital of Poland, on the election
of Sigismund III. (1586). It has now a population of about 445,000,
not including the Russian garrison of 31,500 officers and men. The
left bank of the Vistula, on which Warsaw is chiefly built, is
high, and the pretty, gay, and animated city, with its stately lines
of streets, wide squares, and spacious gardens, is picturesquely
disposed along the brow of the cliff and on the plains above. Across
the broad sandy bed of the stream, here "shallow, ever-changing,
and divided as Poland itself," and which is on its way from the
Carpathians to the Baltic, is the Prague suburb, which, formerly
fortified, has never recovered from the assault by Suvoroff in
1794, when its sixteen thousand inhabitants were indiscriminately
put to the sword.
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