The first part of the ethnographic monograph of a highly diversified region covers the Tatra Mountains and Podhale, the Pieniny, Spisz, Liptów, Orawa, Gorce, Beskid Żywiecki, Beskid Wyspowy, Beskid Sądecki, surroundings of Sucha, Maków, Jordanów, and a part of the Silesian and sub-Carpathian plateaus. It contains fragmentary data about the country and the people, description of the customs of the annual cycle, the most elaborated chapter devoted to family rites and 934 universal songs (of love and family). The material comes from three sources; from Kolberg’s own field research, particularly during the two most productive trips in the years of 1857 and 1863 (a detailed description of weddings from Krościenko and Szczawnica, field notes, mainly of songs and melodies from Szczawnica, Zakopane and their surroundings should, among others, be associated with them); from manuscripts received from his co-workers or through other channels (notes of Z. Urbanowska, J. Riedmuller, B. Gustawicz and of anonymous collectors or ones known only by their last names); finally, from plentiful general descriptive, folkloristic and ethnographic literature on this region (notes, excerpts and citations from the works of W. Anczyc, R. Berwiński, Ł. Gołębiowski, S. Goszczyński, J. Łepkowski, W. Maciejowski, K. Milewski, S. Morawski, Ż. Paul, L. Siemieński, Wacław from Olesko, K. W. Wójcicki, R. Zawiliński, L. Zejszner, L. Zieliński, and others). Kolberg utilized the secondary sources particularly extensively in this volume, especially in the ethnographic description.