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 BULDANA — BULGARIA of the Matabele state. It occupies a central position, about The district has an area of 2809 square miles; and had 5000 feet above sea-level, on the Matoppo hills, and is 1360 a population in 1891 of 477,138, being 171 persons per miles from Cape Town, with which it is connected by rail. square mile. Classified according to religion, Hindus It is the present terminus of the southern section of the numbered 442,588; Mahommedans, 34,405; Christians, Cape to Cairo trunk line, which was in 1901 advancing 103, of whom 18 were Europeans; “others,” 42. In in the direction of the rich coalfields discovered in the 1901 the population was 423,685, showing a decrease of Wanki district below the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi. 12 per cent., due to the effects of famine. The land The “ Place of Slaughter,” as its name is interpreted, was revenue and rates in 1897-98 were Bs.12,55,977, the originally founded about 1838 by Lobengula’s father, incidence of assessment being 13 annas per acre; the Moselekatse, some distance to the south of its present number of police was 455. In 1897-98, out of a total position, and continued to be the royal residence till its cultivated area of 1,208,008 acres, 55,471 were irrigated occupation by the British South Africa Chartered Com- from wells, &c. The only manufacture is cotton cloth. pany’s forces in 1893. Since then it has been completely Cotton, wheat, and oil-seeds are largely exported. The transformed, and is now one of the most flourishing Nagpur line of the Great Indian Peninsula railway runs European towns in South Africa, with a population esti- through the north of the district. The most important mated in 1900 at 6000, of whom over 3000 were whites. place of trade is Malkapur—population (1891), 9222— There have been erected substantial government offices, a with three factories for ginning and pressing cotton. In municipal building, banks, churches, hotels, schools, hos- 1896-97 there were 214 schools, with 7500 pupils, the pitals, a public library, newspaper and telegraph offices. proportion of boys at school being 20 per cent, of the An extensive telephone system has been for some time estimated male population of school-going age. The in operation. Lying in the midst of rich goldfields, and death-rate in 1897 was 53‘6 per 1000. also possessing considerable agricultural resources, it has Bllldlir, or Burdur, chief town of a sanjak in the every prospect of becoming the centre of European culture Konia vilayet in Asia Minor, called by the Christians and civilizing influences in the region between the Limpopo Polydorion, altitude 3150 feet, situated, in the midst of and the Zambezi. gardens, about two miles from the brackish lake Buldur Linen - weaving and Buldana, a town and district of India, in Berar or Geul, ancient Ascania Limne. the Hyderabad assigned districts, under British adminis- leather-tanning are the principal industries. Population, tration. The town had a population in 1891 of 3243. 12,000. 444

BULGARIA. northwards, leaving Trn to the east and Pirot to the west, reach1. Geography and Statistics. ing the Timok near Kula, and following the course of that river to its junction with the Danube. The area thus enclosed extends BULGARIA, the youngest of European states, obtained from lat. 44° 12' 30" to 41° 37' 30" N., and from long. 26° 16' 31" its independence under the first article of the Treaty to 19° 52' 31" E. (meridian of Paris). The Berlin Treaty boundary of Berlin (13th July 1878), being declared an autonomous is far from corresponding with the ethnological limits of the race, which were more accurately defined by the and tributary principality under the suzerainty of the Bulgarian abrogated treaty of San Stefano (see Balkan Peninsula). A sultan of Turkey. The newly-created state comprised only considerable portion of Macedonia, the districts of Pirot and the territory between the Balkans and the Danube, to- Vrania, now belonging to Servia, the northern half of the vilayet gether with the mountainous districts of Sofia, Samakov, of Adrianople, and large tracts of the Dobruja are, according to best and most impartial authorities, mainly inhabited by a Kustendil, and Trn. By Article XIII. of the same instru- the Bulgarian population. ment, a province designated “ Eastern Rumelia ” was The most striking physical features are the two mountainformed south of the Balkans, endowed with administrative chains of the Balkans and Rhodope, the former running east and autonomy under a Christian governor-general, but left west through the heart of the country, the latter Pbysicai forming for a considerable distance its southern features. subject to the direct political and military authority of the boundary. The Balkans constitute the southern half sultan. The de facto union of the two political divisions of the great semicircular range known as the anti-Dacian system, was accomplished by the revolution of Philippopolis of which the Carpathians form the northern portion. The great in 1885. In the following year Prince Alexander of chain is sundered at the Iron Gates by the passage ol the Danube; Bulgaria was nominated to the governor-generalship of its two component parts present many points of resemblance in aspect and outline, geological formation, and flora. The Eastern Rumelia by the Sultan, and in 1896 his successor, their Balkans (ancient Hcrmus) run almost parallel to the Danube, the Prince Ferdinand, was confirmed in that office. A legal mean interval being 60 miles; the summits are, as a rule, union of the two Bulgarias was thus effected in the person rounded, and the slopes gentle. The culminating points are in of their ruler; and as their administrations have been the centre of the range : Yumrukchal (2385 metres), Maraguduk m.), and Kadimlia (2275 m.). The Balkans are known to amalgamated without protest on the part of Turkey, we (2380 the people of the country as the Stara Planina or “ Old Mountain,” are justified in treating of them as a single state. the adjective denoting their greater size as compared with that of Bulgaria is bounded on the north by the Danube, from its con- the adjacent ranges : “ Balkan ” is not a distinctive term, being fluence with the Timok to the eastern suburbs of Silistra applied by the Bulgarians, as well as the Turks, to all moun(Silistria), whence a line, forming the Rumanian frontier, is drawn tains. Closely uparallel to the south are the minor ranges of the to a point on the Black Sea coast a little south of Mangalia. On Sredna Gora or Middle Mountains” (highest summit 15/5 m.) the east it is washed by the Black Sea ; on the south the Turkish and the Karaja Dagh, enclosing respectively the sheltered valleys frontier, starting from a point on the coast about 15 kilometres of Karlovo and Kazanlyk. At its eastern extremity the Balkan south of Sozopolis, runs in a south-westerly direction, crossing chain] divides into three ridges, the central terminating in the Black Sea at Cape Emine (“ Hamms ”), the northern forming the the river Maritza at Mustafa Pasha, and reaching the Arda at watershed between the tributaries of the Danube and the rivers Adakali. The line laid down by the Berlin Treaty ascended the Arda to Ishiklar, thence following the crest of Rhodope to the falling directly into the Black Sea. The Rhodope, or southern westwards, but the cantons of Krjali and Rupchus included in group, is altogether distinct from the Balkans, with which, howit is connected by the Malka Pianina and the Ikhtiman hills, this boundary were restored to Turkey in 1886. The present ever, west and east ol Sofia ; it may be regarded as a frontier, passing to the north of these districts, reaches the respectively continuation the great Alpine system which traverses the watershed of Rhodope a little north of the Dospat valley, and then Peninsula fromof the Dinaric Alps and the Shar Planina on the follows the crest of the Rilska Planina to the summit of Tchrni west to the Shabkhana Dagh near the iEgean coast; its sharper Vrkh, where the Servian, Turkish, and Bulgarian territories outlines and pine-clad steeps reproduce the scenery of the Alps meet.’ From this point the western or Servian frontier passes