THE PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA. 629 



that can be affirmed is that a tribe of Finnic-speaking people crossed 

 the Danube toward the end of the seventh century and possessed them- 

 selves of territory near its mouth. Remaining heathen for two hun- 

 dred 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. Gopcevic 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. Politi- 

 cal 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 penin- 

 sula of Salonica, while the Turks are sparsely disseminated every- 

 where. And as for religion — well, besides the severally orthodox 

 Greeks and Turks, there are in addition the Moslem and apostate Bul- 

 garians, 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 un- 

 worked. As Dr. Beddoe writes — and his remarks are equally ap- 

 plicable to Americans — " here are fine opportunities for any enter- 

 prising Englishman with money and a taste for travel and with suf- 

 ficient 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 



* 1889 a, with map, in Peterraann, 1889 b. Cf. criticism of his contention by Oppel, 

 1890; Couvreur, 1890, p. 523; and Ghennadieff, 1890, p. 663. 



