For a long time the Austrian ministry of railways set itself the task of drawing the attention of the traveling public to the beauties of the scenery and the ethnographical charms in which Austria abounds, and thus inducing them to visit the country.  To gain this end the ministry issued various publications, opened inquiry offices, and arranged exhibitions.  The exhibition “Sceneries and People of Austria” in the Government pavilion was arranged, with the cooperation of several artists, for the same object.  The exhibit principally consisted of a collection of views of the most beautiful parts of Austria, especially the Austrian Alps, and pictures of Austrian national life.  Photographs taken by the best photographers, as well as a number of artistic amateur photos, representing important traveling districts in Austria (99 in all), were enlarged and reproduced as pigment prints or linographs.  Two series of photographic prints were exhibited also, one consisting of Austrian castles and strongholds and the other of various favorite alpine resorts.  Further, a selection of alpine and traveling works in luxurious editions were shown.

The whole exhibition was finished off with a collection of 14 pictures of costumes and sport, arranged like a frieze and illustrating special Austrian national scenes.  Four bronze statuettes, viz, “Chamois-hunter,” “Alpine tourist,” “Ski sportsman,” “Alpine dairy woman,” had been placed in the room as decorations.

The exhibition of models, plans, and photographs of the existing and projected canal for deep-draft ships, arranged by the department of the ministry of commerce for the building of waterways, offered a general view of the whole network of the Austrian waterways, comprising those of the Danube, Moldau, and Elbe rivers, together with the system of canals.

The beautiful landscape of the river sides was shown by means of views of the Danube, contained in an album, while the plans, photographs, and models exhibited by the Danube Regulation Commission showed the river courses, the harbor in lower Austria and Vienna, as well as the construction for regulating the water level in the Vienna-Danube Canal.  A map of Prague showed the harbor and canal construction works, some finished and others projected, in the precincts of the town.  The drawings and photos exhibited in a corner of the hall by the Aussig-Teplitz Railway Company illustrated the position and traffic of the harbor of Aussig, the most important inland harbor of Austria.  The charts, in addition to giving a view of the position of the canals and rivers, with canals projected, showed also longitudinal sections of the Danube-Oder Canal.

The exhibitions of the State professional art schools, arranged by the imperial royal ministry of public instruction, Vienna, gave an idea of the work done by these institutions.  The exhibition was arranged in three divisions, the first two containing the exhibits of the schools for arts and crafts in Vienna and Prague (the largest of their kind in Austria) and the third the work of the other professional art schools.