Pruzany Section

1.The Environment

1.1. Forests

1.2. The Rivers

1.3 Roadways and paths

1. The environment

1.1 Forests

The area surrounding Pruzhany today has very few trees, if we don't take into account the ones planted by human being. There are not any great forests in the surroundings radius of ten kilometers. The areas around Pruzhany are similar to a great plain, several kilometers long open to human eye.

Pruzhany is as an average 163 meters above sea level, although sometimes the surface is greater or slighter than the average. The environment has changed a lot during the last centuries according to the documents we have and the legends that we listen to in the city.

A great forest covered Pruzhany some centuries ago and was inhabited by "hurs"¹; it was called the “Pushka of Pruzhany”. This fact is strengthened by a document from 1644 when Jewish people got special privileges from the Polish King Vladislav IV. These documents show that the Jewishs had the right to let the cattle graze at the entrance of the “Pushka of Pruzhany”, the same right the gentiles had. That is why they must share the same responsibilities with the gentiles with regard to the Pushka.

There is a second demonstration and we find it in the “Review of Pushkas and wondering animals”² by Grihar Vallovich from the year 1559. There we learn that "the range of the forest is from the Pushkas of Pinsk going along Tarakan, Horodetz and Kobrin to the Pushkas of Kobrin, to the side of Hrushawaia between Kobrin and Pruzhany over the river Muchawietz". "It goes between the fields and yards of Shereshov and the village of Wieshna to Shereshov and the “Bieloviezer Pushka” ³ . From all these details we come to the conclusion that a Pushka covered the entire environment surrounding. Pruzhany of today is free from trees that during the years disappeared completely.

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1. TN (translators note): A hur is an animal of the family of bison.
2."Revisie Pushtsh i ferechodov zwierinich", Vilna 1867, cited by S. Wislaw "Rozvai Granitz territorium powiatu Kobrinskieno do Polovi, Vieko XVI" Vilna 1930
3. This forest still exist near Brest, and is part in Belarus and part in Poland