Short text describing the achievements of Poles all over the world and geographical places, buildings and monuments named after Polish travellers and artists (Source: "Dziennik Polski", Czeski Cieszyn 1938, R: 5, no. 178, p. 4, after: Silesian Digital Library).

A modernised reading of the text

Polish names on the globe.

Looking at the spinning globe, we mostly see foreign geographical names outside our own country. The immensity of Africa, Asia or the Americas is dominated by the names given by the conquering Anglo-Saxon race. But do we come across a share of Poles in this heritage? Apart from the North American landmass, where in the USA and Canada one encounters numerous cities and settlements with indigenous Polish names, such as Kraków, Warszawa, Toruń, Lviv, Wilno, Poznań, Polonia, Kościuszko, Batory, Wanda, Jadwiga, etc., given by clusters of Polish immigrants, and apart from the South American landmass with Brazil, Polish geographical names quite rarely adorn the atlases. But let us try to sort these names.

Cities, as we have mentioned, have a Polish name insofar as the Polish clusters, inhabiting these settlements in overwhelming numbers, gave them with the consent of the majority of the inhabitants of the settlement or city. Polish immigrants from Cracow established the settlement of Cracow on the American mainland, while those from Mazovia built the foundations of the future American city of Warsaw. Mixed groups gave names taken from national heroes, such as Kościuszko, Pułaski, etc. In addition to the names of cities and outlying settlements, Polish science christened a number of mountain ranges, islands, capes and lakes with Polish names.

Who has not heard of Mount Kosciuszko in South Australia, on whose snowy summit the first to hoist the national banner was a Pole, Count Strzelecki, after whom the mountain and the stream are also named in Australia. However, most exploratory journeys were made by Poles in Asia, particularly in the areas of Siberia and Tibet. Thus, the Siberian mountains of Czersky and Czekanowski, the Polish mountain Mollesson and Wanda are well known. In Kamchatka - the Dybowski mountain and the Sulkowski cape. In Tibet - the Przewalski mountains and the Bogdanovichi mountain ridge. On the shores of Korea, we encounter Potocki's islands, and after polar expeditions, Nalkowski's river, Halina's waterfall and Arctowski's mountain and glacier appeared on maps of northern glaciers.

On the shores of Alaska, we see as many as five Polish geographic names: Kościuszko Island, Zaremba Island and Wojewódzki Island, as well as Wisniewski Reef and Romer Glacier. In Canada, there is Obalski's Lake, in South America - Domeyko's mountains, Cape and Polonia Bay, and lower down, beneath the Fire-Earth, on the shores of the polar circle of the South Pole, the Nunatak (island) of the Polish explorer and discoverer Arctowski. In the black African land we can find only one Polish geographical name - Fort Motylinski in the French Sudan.