614 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN" PENINSULA— THE 

 GREEK, THE SLAV, AND THE TURK.* 



By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ; LECTURER 

 IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 



npiIE significant geography of the Balkan Peninsula may best be 

 J- illustrated by comparing it with the other two south European 

 ones, Italy and Spain. The first point to notice is that it is divided 

 from the mainland by rivers and not by a well-defined mountain 

 chain. Iberia begins definitely at the Pyrenees, and Italy proper is 

 cut off from Europe by the Apennine chain. On the other hand, it is 

 along the line of the Danube and of its western affluent, the Save (see 

 map between pages 614 and 615), that we find the geographical limits 

 of the Balkan Peninsula. This boundary, as will be observed, ex- 

 cludes the kingdom of Roumania, seeming to distinguish it from its 

 trans-Danubian neighbor Bulgaria. This is highly proper, viewed 

 from the standpoint of geography and topography. For Roumania 

 is, for the most part, an extensive and rich alluvial plain; while the 

 Balkan Peninsula, as soon as you leave the Bulgarian lowlands, is 

 characteristically rugged, if not really mountainous. 



From Adrianople west to the Adriatic, and from the Balkan 

 Mountains and the Save River south to the plains of Epirus and 

 Thessaly, extends an elevated region upward of two thousand feet 

 above the sea, breaking up irregularly into peaks often rising above 

 five thousand feet. There is no system in these mountains. The 

 land is rudely broken up into a multitude of little " gateless amphi- 

 theaters," too isolated for union, yet not inaccessible enough for indi- 

 viduality. As White observes, " If the peninsula, instead of being 

 the highly mountainous and diversified district it is, had been a 

 plateau, a very different distribution of races would have obtained at 

 the present day." Nor can one doubt for a moment that this disor- 

 dered topography has been an important element in the racial history 

 of the region. 



In its other geographical characteristics this peninsula is seem- 

 ingly more favored than either Spain or Italy. More varied than 

 the former, especially in its union of the two flora of north and south ; 

 far richer in contour, in the possession of protected waters and good 

 harbors than Italy; the Balkan Peninsula, nevertheless, has been, 

 humanly speaking, unfortunate from the start. The reason is patent. 

 It lies in its central or rather intermediate location. It is betwixt 



* Advance sheets from The Races of Europe, in press of D. Appleton and Company, 

 many footnotes and detailed references being here omitted. 



