THE PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA. 615 



and between; neither one thing nor the other. Surely a part of 

 Europe, its rivers all run to the east and south. " By physical relief 

 it turns its back on Europe," continually inviting settlement from 

 the direction of Asia. It is no anomaly that Asiatic religions, Asiatic 

 institutions, and Asiatic races should have possessed and held it; nor 

 that Europe, Christianity, and the Aryan-speaking races should have 

 resisted this invasion of territory which they regarded in a sense as 

 their own. In this pull and haul between the social forces of the two 

 continents we finally discover the dominant influence, perhaps, which 

 throughout history has condemned this region to political disorder 

 and ethnic heterogeneity. 



As little racial as of topographical system can we discover in this 

 Balkan Peninsula. Only in one respect may we venture upon a little 

 generalization. This is suggested by the preliminary bird's-eye view 

 which we must take as to the languages spoken in the peninsula. 

 This was a favorite theme with the late historian Freeman. It is 

 developed in detail in his luminous writings upon the Eastern ques- 

 tion. The Slavs have in this part of Europe played a role somewhat 

 analogous to, although less successful than, that of the Teutons in 

 the west. They have pressed in upon the territory of the classic civili- 

 zations of Greece and Rome, ingrafting a new and physically vigor- 

 ous population upon the old and partially enervated one. From some 

 center of dispersion up north toward Russia, Slavic-speaking peoples 

 have expanded until they have rendered all eastern Europe Slavic 

 from the Arctic Ocean to the Adriatic and ^gean Seas. Only at one 

 place is the continuity of Slavdom broken; but this interruption is 

 sufficient to set off the Slavs into two distinct groups at the present 

 day. The northern one, of which we have already treated,* consists of 

 the Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. The southern group, now 

 before us, comprises the main body of the Balkan peoples from the 

 Serbo-Croatians to the Bulgars, as shown upon the accompanying 

 map. Between these two groups of Slavs — and herein is the sig- 

 nificant point — is a broad belt of non-Slavic population, composed, of 

 the Magyars, linguistically now as always Finns; and the Roumani- 

 ans, who have become Latin in speech within historic times. This 

 intrusive, non-Slavic belt lies along or near the Danube, that great 

 highway over which eastern peoples have penetrated Europe for cen- 

 turies. The presence of this water way is distinctly the cause of the 

 linguistic phenomenon. Rome went east; and the Finns, like the 

 Huns, went west along it, with the result as described. Linguistically 

 speaking, therefore, the boundary of the southern Slavs and that of 

 the Balkan Peninsula, beginning, as we have said, at the Danube, are 

 one and the same. 



* Popular Science Monthly, October, 1898. 



