1118 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



garia, to which it naturally belonged by 

 all laws of ethnography and geography. 

 In October, 1908, Prince Ferdinand pro- 

 claimed Bulgaria an independent king- 

 dom, and thus thirty years after the 

 Bulgarian war of independence their 

 freedom was officially recognized in 

 Europe. 



This virile, laborious, thrifty, and per- 

 severing race has displayed many quali- 

 ties which entitle it to play an important 

 part in the future history of southeast- 

 ern Europe. During the thirty years of 

 its troubled existence the young Bul- 

 garian State has made almost phenomenal 

 progress. Education has advanced rap- 

 idly; public works have been instituted 

 on a large scale ; the country has been 

 covered with a network of railways ; 

 wealth has undoubtedly increased, and 

 order has been maintained, often in cir- 

 cumstances of great difficulty. The mili- 

 tary organization receives high praise 

 from foreign experts. Notwithstanding 

 the recent economic crisis, the financial 

 situation compares favorably with that 

 of the sister States, inasmuch as the na- 

 tional debt is proportionately small. 



The Bulgarians indeed have worked 

 wonders. "They have existed since the 

 treaty of Berlin in conditions anything 

 but favorable to development. They 



have had no active friends, and they have- 

 had to contend with very active and un- 

 scrupulous foes. Assassins have been. 

 hired to murder their leading citizens ;. 

 foreign emissaries have lived among' 

 them to stir up revolution by the basest 

 means ; they have had to fight the Ser- 

 vians, and they have lived in constant ap- 

 prehension of invasion by a far more 

 powerful foe. They have faced all these 

 difficulties with a calm courage and per- 

 severance of which any race might be 

 proud, and have proved themselves the 

 most solid and trustworthy of the claim- 

 ants for the reversion of the Turk" (see 

 also pages 1106 and 11 27). 



The Bulgarians have always regarded 

 the boundaries of San Stefano as more 

 or less adequately defining the rightful 

 limits of their race ; beyond those bound- 

 aries there is no considerable Bulgarian 

 element in any part of the peninsula ex- 

 cept the Dodruja, and the national ener- 

 gies have therefore been concentrated 

 on Macedonia and the Adrianople vila- 

 yet. The great Macedonian immigra- 

 tion into Bulgaria — -there has been no 

 similar influx into Greece or Servia — 

 has had a powerful influence on popular 

 feeling and political development in the 

 principality, and has considerably af- 

 fected the economic situation. 



THE RACES AND RELIGIONS OF MACEDONIA^ 



By Luigt Villari 

 Author of "Russia undkr the Great Shadow" 



HAD the population of Macedonia 

 been homogeneous, the Mace- 

 donian problem would have 

 been settled long ago, but the mixture of 

 races has ever been a marked charac- 

 teristic of the Balkan Peninsula, and of 

 no part of it more so than of Macedonia. 

 It is necessary to begin by explaining 

 what is meant by the term Macedonia. 

 The country forms neither a racial, a lin- 

 guistic, nor a political unit. Geograph- 

 ically it is a unit, being bounded by the 

 Shar Dagh on the north, the Albanian 

 mountains on the west, the river Bis- 



tritza and the ^-Egean Sea on the south, 

 and the Rhodope mountains on the east, 

 and at a remote period of its history it 

 formed a kingdom. The country which 

 we now call Macedonia consists of the 

 three vilayets of Salonica, Monastir, and 

 Kossovo, and the Macedonian question 

 refers to the conditions of those prov- 

 inces. The expression, however, is often 

 extended to the Adrianople vilayet as 

 well, where the conditions are somewhat 

 similar. But, geographically, it is quite 

 separate from Macedonia. 



It must be remembered that the Turk- 



* From "The Balkan Question," edited by Luigi Villari. 



