Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/11



distribution of the Slavs in Europe is excellently conjectured by Professor Lubor Niederle, the Czech authority, in the following terms ("Slovanský Svět," p. 2):—

"The primitive Slav race had its nucleus between the Oder and the Dnieper; stage by stage, in prehistoric times, it had reached the Elbe, the Saale, the Danube, the Niemen and the Baltic. It had spread itself over this wide area, partly through the influence of certain geographical conditions, as, for example, the main watercourses and mountains, partly through currents of civilisation, whose effects in the East differed from those in the West; partly also, through the influence of linguistic development. To begin with, the divisions were three in number. The first, to the west of the Vistula and the Carpathians, spread out in a westerly direction beyond the lower Elbe, the Saale and the Bohemian Forest, resulting in those branches of the Slavs known as the Polabians, Pomeranians, Poles and Czechs; the second, whose primitive headquarters lay between the Upper Vistula, the Dniester and the middle Danube, in course of time advanced