To the student of history it is a surprise that a country of such diverse peoples, having but little in common save mutual race-hatred, should hold together under the same general government. The explanation, however, is found in the topography of the region. The basin of the Danube is a great food-producing region, and the upper valley of the Elbe River forms the easiest passage from the Black to the Baltic Sea. The topography therefore gives the greater part of the country commercial unity. The climate and surface of the low plains of Hungary are much the same as those of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Grain-growing and stock-raising are the chief employments. High freight rates, a long haul, and the competition of Russia and Roumania have retarded the development of these industries, however. Bohemia is likewise a grain-growing country, and the easy route into Germany through the Elbe Valley makes the industry a profitable one. Bohemia is also in the sugar-beet area. There is an abundance of coal in Austria, but most of it is unfit for the manufacture of iron and steel. Steel manufacture, however, is carried on, the industry being protected by the distance from the German steel-making centres. The lead-mines about Bleiberg (or "Leadville") are very productive; at Idria are the only quicksilver-mines in Europe that compete with those of Almaden, Spain. The salt-mines near Krakow are in a mass of rock-salt twelve hundred feet thick. Most of the manufactured products are for home consumption. American cotton and home-grown wool supply the greater part of the textiles. The flour-mills are equipped with the very best of machinery, and much of the product is for export to Germany and the countries to the south. The manufactures that have made the state famous, however, are gloves and glassware, both of which are widely exported. The sand, fluxes, and coloring minerals of Bohemian glassware are all peculiar to the region, and the wares, therefore, cannot be imitated elsewhere. The gloves are made from the skins of Hungarian sheep and goats. The railways are not well organized, and the mileage is insufficient for the needs of the country. Ludwig Canal (in Germany) connects the Danube with the Main, a navigable tributary of the Rhine; the Elbe is navigable from a point above Prague to the Baltic; the Moravian Gate opens a passage from Vienna northward; the Iron Gate, through which the Danube flows, is the route to the Black Sea; Semmering Pass and its tunnel is the gateway to the ports of the Adriatic. These great routes practically converge at Vienna, which also is the great railway centre of the empire.