I have referred in the preceding chapter to the position which the Jew occupies in the economic organization of Polish life. He is the middleman and has the trade of the country very largely in his hands. I was particularly impressed with this fact by what I saw in the course of this journey. Although the Jews represent only about 13 per cent. of the population of Galicia, I am certain that more than half of the people on the train on which we travelled were people of that race. There were Jews of all descriptions and in all stages of evolution, from the poor, patient pedler, wearing the garb of the Ghetto, to the wealthy banker or merchant fastidiously dressed in the latest European fashion. When we left the train at Tuchow it was a Jewish horse trader who drove us in his improvised coach the remainder of our journey into the mountains. A restaurant at which we stopped to get something to eat on our return was conducted by a Jew. Halfway to our destination we passed a tumbledown cottage, close to the roadside, with a few trinkets in the window and some skins hanging from the beam which ran along the front of the building. We stopped and spoke to an ancient man with a long white beard, who lives there. He, also, was a Jewish trader. As I recall, he was engaged in buying skins from the peasants, paying them in the junk which I noticed displayed in the window. When we reached the tavern at the end of our journey it turned out that the man who ran the tavern was a Jew. Apparently wherever in Poland money changes hands a Jew is always there to take charge of it. In fact, it seemed to me that the Jew in Poland was almost like the money he handled, a sort of medium of exchange. It was a very curious conveyance in which we made the last stage of our journey into the mountains. Instead of the droske we had expected to meet at the station we found what, under ordinary circumstances, would have been a farmer's wagon, I suppose, although it was an altogether different sort of farmer's wagon from any I had ever seen in America. The frame of this vehicle was something like a great long basket, narrow at the bottom, where it sat upon the axles, and wider at the top. The rim of this basket was made of poles, about the size of a fence rail, and this rim was supported upon the frame, which rested on the wagon, by little poles or pickets fastened in the frame below and the rim above, like a fence paling. The frame was so formed that it might have served the purpose either of a hayrick or a carryall. In this case it had been converted into a sort of coach or omnibus, with hanging seats, supported with leather straps from the rim. Arranged in this way this farmer's wagon was a not inconvenient mode of travel, and, driving through the fresh green country, dotted with quaint, little moss-covered cottages which seemed as much a part of the landscape as if they had grown there, the journey was made very pleasantly.