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Galicia (Former province of Austria now)
a former province of Austria, now a part of the Republic of Poland, bounded by Russia, Bukowina, Hungary, and Moravia; area, 30,307 square miles; pop., Polish in the W., Russniak in the E. The great physical features of the country are, in a manner determined by the Carpathians, which form a long and irregular curve on the S. and send out branches into Galicia. Farther to the N. the hills subside rapidly and finally merge into vast plains. It has several considerable rivers, those on the W. being affluents of the Vistula, those in the E. of the Danube and Dniester. The climate is severe, particularly in the S. where more than one of the Carpathian summits rise beyond the snow-line. The summers are very warm but comparatively short. The soil in general is fertile, and yields abundant crops of cereals, hemp, flax, tobacco, etc. The domestic animals include great numbers of horned cattle and a fine hardy breed of horses. Sheep are in general neglected; but goats, swine and poultry abound, and bee-keeping is practiced on a large scale. Bears and wolves are still found in the forests; and all the lesser kinds of game are in abundance.
The minerals include marble, alabaster, copper, calamine, coal, iron, and rock salt. Only the last two are of much importance. Rock salt is particularly abundant. The most important mines have their central locality at Wieliczka. at Wieliczka .
Manufactures have not made much progress.
The spinning and weaving of flax and hemp prevail to a considerable extent on the confines of Silesia . Distilleries exist in every quarter. The Roman Catholics and the Greek Catholics are the chief religious bodies. The chief educational establishments are the University of Lemberg and that of Cracow. The principal towns are Lemberg, the capital, and Cracow.
After being the field of continuous strife between Russians, Poles, and Hungarians, Galicia continued a Polish dependency from 1382 till the first partition of Poland in 1772, when it was ac-