1936 On the Continent

boar and fox, and even a few bears. But apart from these large ranges there are plenty of rugged hills and uplands throughout the country. Indeed, it is only along the course of the Elbe in Bohemia, in Southern Moravia and in Southern Slovakia that there are any plains. Everywhere else the traveller will come across an endless variety of slopes. These include limestone hills, the underground caves of which I have already mentioned, sandstone hills near Turnov and Din where the wind and the rain have engraved thousands of grotesque human and animal shapes and other designs upon the high sandstone rocks, the Sulovske ridges, which are like sharp narrow pyramids, while other ranges consist of volcanic formations rising up from the plains.
    This great variety of landscape, however, is surpassedby the variety of the country’s population. First of all there is the diversity of language. The strip of territory along the western frontier is occupied by Germans who in days gone by were invited here by the Czech kings to colonise the bare and hilly frontiers regions. In the north, round Tšin, there are several Polish villages. In the southern strip of Slovakia live the Magyars. In the most easterly part of the Republic are Ruthenians, East European Jews and Roumanians. However, the great majority of the old native population of the Republic consists of Czechs and Slovaks, two Slav races who differ very little from each other and who occupied these regions as early as the migration of the peoples.
Contrasts
    All those who have travelled eastward are aware of the great contrasts which can be observed within very short distances. In Czechoslovakia, for example, as you proceed from west to east you can conveniently trace in miniature the gradations of European culture. You start your journey amid all the achievements of twentieth-century civilisation, and the next day you find yourself transferred as if by magic into the seventeenth century or even farther back still. In the west of Czechoslovakia are the huge industrial cities, the magnificent spas, the capital itself, Prague, which is one of the finest cities in Europe, while in the east of the Republic you come across districts which do not seem to have changed for the last thousand years, where the inhabitants themselves produce all that they need, where they can still find time to embroider their costumes by hand and where they have maintained all their old festivals, customs and ceremonies.
    As the visitor from abroad can experience these contrasts only in Czechoslovakia, I will here enlarge upon this aspect of the country.
    First of all, then, the people. When travelling by car or even by train through Czechoslovakia you will notice that the regions which are not covered by the border ranges of mountains or by forests, resemble a patchwrok quilt spread over all the slopes and plains. Almost without any gaps the surface of the country is marked off in regular square fields and orchards. It produces everything that its inhabitants need for their livelihoodand, in fact, it produces everything in abundance; all kinds of field produce, vegetables, cattle, game, hops, wine, fruit, flowers, milk. Every square inch of land which is productive in the slightest degree is cultivated to the utmost extent. The farmers and peasants in this country are hard workers who would be even happier if the soil had at least two layers. As it has only one, they do their best to make it yield at least two harvests a year. Most of them are smallholders who work their patch of ground entirely on their own, and for this reason, too, they have to work extremely hard. As they know the value of money they are frugal, but not miserly. They gladly make sacrifices to enable their children to study, and most of the intellectuals in Czechoslovakia are of peasant origin.
Peasants
    In the western regions, where there are plenty of towns and industrial centres, the lives of the rural population have become adapted to the conditions prevailing throughout modern Europe. In the eastern areas; however, the peasants approximate far more to the older traditional type, and in many districts to a type which, in the rest of Europe, is already dying out. There you will find national costumes, superstitions, songs, dances and, in fact, the whole range of folklore preserved intact. In the extreme east of the Republic this primitive form of life is still quite unaffected by modern conditions, but in the central regions,