Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/172

 these hills, woods and marshes. In the Balkans the Roman language remained only in the depths of the Pindus, on the shores of the western sea, and in the broader plains of Thessaly. In the Carpathians, Slavonic words were only added to the old stock of clear Latinity. From the Danube to the Besides, from the great river of the west, the Theiss, to its counterpart in the east, the Dniester, all this, to this day, is Roman.

Where then does the peninsula of the Balkans begin? A comparison with the two other peninsulas of Southern Europe may usefully assist in answering the question. Spain springs from the Pyrenees, the more southerly sierras being only the frontiers of the different provinces; Italy commences at the Alps, the Appennines representing the backbone of her body. In the third peninsula the role of the Pyrenees and of the Alps passes not to the Carpathians, a mountain range of Central Europe, connected with Poland and Slovakia and directed by their prolongations towards the west, but to the true peninsular range, termed the Balkans (Turkish: mountain), its junction with the Carpathians at the Iron Gates being interrupted by the Danube. The Rhodope is the only Balkan sierra to the south, while the Pindus can be considered as the Appennines of these countries. Each valley is dependent on the others. Through this system of mountains all provinces of the Pindo-Balkans are interconnected: Roumania, with the Sarmatian plains of Moldavia tending towards the Russian infinity, and the flat cornfields of Wallachia running down to the Danube, is decidedly a separate country.