Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/651

Rh that can be affirmed is that a tribe of Finnic-speaking people crossed the Danube toward the end of the seventh century and possessed themselves of territory near its mouth. Remaining heathen for two hundred odd years, they finally adopted Christianity and under their great leaders, Simeon and Samuel, became during the tenth century a power in the land. Their rulers, styling themselves "Emperors of the Slavs," fought the Germans; conquered the Magyars as well as their neighbors in Thrace, receiving tribute from Byzantium; became allies of Charlemagne; and then subsided under the rule of the Turks. Since the practical demise of this latter power they have again taken courage, and in their semi-political independence in Bulgaria and northern Roumelia rejoice in an ever-rich and growing literature and sense of nationality.

Bulgarian is spoken, as our map at page 614 indicates, far outside the present political limits of the principality—indeed, over about two thirds of European Turkey. Gopčević has made a brilliant attempt to prove that Macedonia, shown by our map and commonly believed to be at bottom Bulgarian, is in reality populated mainly by Serbs. The weakness of this contention was speedily laid bare by his critics. Political motives, especially the ardent desire of the Servians to make good a title to Macedonia before the disruption of the Ottoman Empire, can scarcely be denied. Servia needs an outlet on the Mediterranean too obviously to cloak such an attempted ethnic usurpation. As a fact, Macedonia, even before the late Greco-Turkish war, was in a sad state of anarchy. The purest Bulgarian is certainly spoken in the Bhodope Mountains; there are many Roumanians of Latin speech; the Greeks predominate all along the sea and throughout the three-toed peninsula of Salonica, while the Turks are sparsely disseminated everywhere. And as for religion—well, besides the severally orthodox Greeks and Turks, there are in addition the Moslem and apostate Bulgarians, known as Pomaks, who have nothing in common with their Greek Catholic fellow-Bulgars, together with the scattering Pindus Roumanians and Albanians in addition. This interesting field of ethnographic investigation is, even at this late day, practically unworked. As Dr. Beddoe writes—and his remarks are equally applicable to Americans—"here are fine opportunities for any enterprising Englishman with money and a taste for travel and with sufficient brains to be able to pick up a language. But, alas! such men usually seem to care for nothing but 'killing something.'"

The Roumanians, or Moldo-Wallachians, are not confined within the limits of that country alone. Their language and nationality cover not only the plains along the Danube and the Black Sea, but