Travels in the Slavonic provinces of Turkey-in-Europe, / By Sebright, Georgina Mary Muir (Mackenzie),

CHAPTER V.
BULGARIA VIEWED FROM SALONICA.—PART I.

"The entrance of Russia into the political system of the European nations was marked by an attempt to take Constantinople,—a project which it has often revived, and which the progress of Christian civilisation seems to indicate must now be realised at no very distant date, unless the revival of the Bulgarian kingdom to the south of the Danube create a new Slavonian power in the east of Europe capable of arresting its progress."

—FINLAY'S History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 223.

"As for the Bulgarians, whether they remain yet awhile under Turkish rule or free themselves from it in our own time, as they must ultimately do sooner or later, it is in them alone that one can see any really hopeful prospect, on taking a broad general view of the probable future of these countries. This is afforded by their numerical preponderance; their utter primitiveness, which has learned nothing, and has nothing to unlearn; their industry and thrift; their obstinacy; and their sobriety of character."

—LORD STRANGFORD.

WE have said that Salonica is geographically Bulgarian; in other words, it is one of the ports of that country with a Slavonic-speaking population which stretches from the Ægean to the Danube. Indeed, Salonica itself forms a point on the ethnographical boundary which, in this part of Turkey in Europe, divides the Slavonic population from the Greek. To a certain extent this frontier coincides with the line of the old Roman road between Salonica and the Lake of Ochrida; nevertheless some miles of country, inhabited by Bulgarians, stretch south of the Via Egnatia, Greek colonies lie to the north of it, and in the towns the population is mixed, in part consisting of Osmanli Turks. The other boundary cities are Monastir, Vodena, and Yenidjé; in all of which dwell

few or no Greeks, whereas in Salonica itself there are only about 500 families of Slāvs.

On its south-eastern frontier, it is worthy of notice, the mass of the Slavonic population stops everywhere short of the sea, and leaves (or perforates only with stragglers) a coast-strip including part of Thrace, the Chalcidian peninsula, the cities of Constantinople and Salonica. This district is so variously peopled, so important for commercial and strategical purposes,—and it would so ill-suit any one that it should fall into the grip of any one else—that those who look forward to a readjustment of the Slāvo-Greek peninsula take it under their especial care. Among other plans, they suggest that it be erected into a neutral territory, and attached to the two great sea-ports, in the same manner as domains are attached to the Free Cities of Germany. These modifiers would give Greece her due in Thessaly and Epirus, and accord native and Christian self-government, as now exercised by the Principality of Serbia, to all the Slavonic provinces of Turkey.

Without venturing an opinion on this or other political projects, we may remark that any arrangement which would disincumber the thrifty and well-disposed Bulgarian of the yoke of his present barbarous master, would certainly prove a gain to civilisation, and in one respect especially to ourselves. Its immediate result would be the development of the resources of the country, and, among others, of its resources in cotton. The vast desert plain of Salonica is stated to be peculiarly adapted for the growth of Sea Island cotton; and a neighbouring district, not far from the town of Seres, is so favourable to the culture, that a man who planted the third of an acre with cotton realized a profit of £60. This cultivation is in the hands of Bulgarians; the Turkish landlord cares only to clutch half the produce,

and the farmer of the Turkish revenue is the arch-foe of industry.

The labouring, i.e., the Christian Slavonic, population of the country behind Salonica holds land on the following tenure: after a tenth has been paid to the Sultan, seed is put aside for the coming year, and of what produce remains the landlord gets half.

As for the taxation: in Turkey, grievances commence at the point where in other countries they are supposed to culminate; so we say nothing of the injustice to a population of millions that it should have no voice in the disposal of its money. Granted that the Bulgarians be ready to give all the government calls for, and moreover, to pay for exemption from the army, that is, for being disarmed and held down by Mussulmans, "Exemption from the army" is the name now given to the tribute paid by Christians as such, which formerly was called haratch. The people still use the old word, for to them the tax remains the same, and so does its practical signification, i.e., the Christian continues the disarmed tributary of the Mussulman. still the greatest grievance remains, viz., the waste and iniquity wherewith the revenue is raised.

Hitherto the taxes have been paid in kind, a method which always gives the gatherer much power to extort bribes, since he can refuse to value the peasant's standing corn until half of it be spoiled. But Turkish tax-farmers do not confine themselves to such by-paths of cheating. The following is an instance of what constantly recurs:—

Two men agree to keep a flock between them, the one in summer on the mountains, the other in winter on the plain. The tax-gatherer compels the first to pay for the whole, promising that he will ask nothing of the other; he then goes to the second, and with a similar promise forces him likewise to pay for all. In like manner, the Christian can be compelled to pay twice over for exemption from the army if the tax-gatherer declare his first

receipt forged. The other day a Bulgarian brought his receipt to the British consul, who threatened the official to have it sent up for investigation. Immediately the charge was withdrawn.

A change of system is being introduced which will supersede payment in kind by payment in money. But it is hard to see how this is to prove beneficial without such means of transport and security of communication as would enable the peasant to bring his produce to market. At present, while he must sell it in the neighbourhood wherein it abounds, he is taxed for it at market value. The people declare that the oppression is now worse than before, and that this is one of the many soi-disant reforms which tell well on paper, while unless followed up by other reforms they prove actually mischievous. We ourselves saw the tax-gatherer swooping down on the villages, accompanied by harpy-flocks of Albanians armed to the teeth.

On occasion of the late cotton famine, the British Government instigated the Porte to encourage the growth of cotton, to give the seed for experiments, and, what is more important, to suspend, in favour of cotton, some of the modes of taxation which chiefly harass agricultural industry. The Christian Bulgarians have responded to this encouragement in a manner that gives fair promise of their energies should they ever be entirely free from vexatious interference.

By Bulgaria we understand, not that insignificant portion of the same termed "the Turkish Province of Bulgaria," but the whole tract of country peopled by Bulgarians. The population, usually given as four millions, is estimated by the people themselves as from five to six millions—forming the eastern division of the South Slavonic race. The Bulgarians are distinguished in all essentials from their neighbours—the

[figure]

BULGARIAN PEASANTS, WITH BULGARIAN MERCHANT AND HIS SON WHO HAS SPENT SOME YEARS OUT OF TURKEY.

Greek, the Rouman, and the Turk; they differ in a few points of character from their own western kindred, the Croato-Serbs. The chief of these latter points is a deficiency in what is called esprit politique, and a corresponding superiority in the notion of material comfort. Unlike the Serb, the Bulgarian does not keep his self-respect alive with memories of national glory, nor even with aspirations of glory to come; on the other hand, no amount of oppression can render him indifferent to his field, his horse, his flower-garden, nor to the scrupulous neatness of his dwelling.

How strongly difference of race can tell under identical conditions of climate, religion,, and government, is exemplified in towns where Greeks have been dwelling side by side with Bulgarians for centuries. The one is commercial, ingenious, and eloquent, but fraudulent, dirty, and immoral; the other is agricultural, stubborn, and slow-tongued; but honest, cleanly, and chaste. The latter quality has from early times attracted respect towards the South Slavonic peoples. Their ancient laws visit social immorality with death, and at present their opinion, inexorable towards women, does not, like our own, show clemency to men. A lady told us that in the society of Greeks she could not be three weeks without becoming the confidante of a chronique scandaleuse; among Bulgarians she had lived for months, and never heard a single "story.""The Greek cannot overcome the Bulgarian, nor lead him, nor incorporate him. He is of a less numerous and not of a superior race; his mind is more keen but less solid; roughly speaking, he is to the Bulgarian as the clever Calcutta baboo to the raw material of the English non-commissioned officer."—LORD STRANGFORD in Eastern Shores of the Adriatic.

In Bulgarian towns the Mussulmans are Osmanli colonists, who form, as it were, the garrison of the province. The Slavonians who have become Mahommedan mostly live in the country and continue to speak Slavonic.

In their bravery and warlike disposition the renegade Bulgarians evince the character of the nation before it was betrayed and disarmed, and they themselves adopted Mahommedanism only to avoid falling into the position of rayahs. In some parts they are known by the name Pomak (from pomegam, "I help"), and are supposed to be descended from those Bulgarian troops who served in the Sultan's army as "allies," until the Turks grew strong enough to force on them the alternative of surrendering their arms or their creed. Among our guards once happened to be a Bulgarian Mussulman, who allowed us to be told in his presence that he was still at heart a Christian; and in the neighbourhood of Salonica we heard of Mahommedan Bulgarians who excuse their apostasy by the following story. Being hard pressed they fixed a certain term during which they would fast and call on Christ, at the end whereof, if no help appeared, they would submit themselves to Mahommed. Help arrived not, and so Mahommedans they became. Since then, the old hatred of race has caused them to take part against the Greeks in more than one insurrection; but they equally detest the Turk, and thus sympathize with their own Christian countrymen in their national antipathies as well as in tenacity of their native tongue.

The rural population of Bulgaria is Christian, and hereabouts the rayah has a down-look and a dogged stolidity, which give one the impression that heart and mind have been bullied out of him. Of late years, however, he has presented an unflagging resistance to the Porte's imposition of foreign bishops; and those who have instructed him, both in his own country and out of it, assured us that he is of excellent understanding and zealous and apt to learn. The Christian Bulgarian is reproached as timid, but at least his is the timidity

of shrinking, not of servility; he hides from those he fears, he does not fawn on them. His country, lying as it does on the road of Turkish armies to the Danube, has been subject to unceasing spoliation, and nothing is more melancholy than the tale told by its desolate highways, and by the carefulness with which villages are withdrawn from the notice of the passers-by. Cross the border into Free Serbia, and the cottage of the peasant reappears.

To give a sketch of Bulgarian history, one must go back to the end of the fifth and beginning of the sixth century, when a Slavonic population south of the Danube is spoken of by Byzantine authors.

Under the old East Roman Empire the people of Bulgaria appear both as subjects and as rulers. Justinian's birthplace was, as it still is, a Slavonic village, in the neighbourhood of Skopia, and his Latin name is the translation of his Slavonic one, Upravda. The great Belisarius is said to have been the Slavonic Velisar; Basil, the Macedonian, or, as Finlay calls him, the Slavonian groom, was the father of the longest line that ever maintained itself upon the throne of Byzance.

It would appear that the first colonists established themselves to the south of the Danube gradually, and recognised the imperial rule; but in the seventh century they were joined by tribes of a more warlike character, under whose leadership they rose against Byzance, and overran the greater part of the peninsula. These newcomers, who were of the same race with the Finns, adopted Christianity, and amalgamated with the Slāvs. From them dates the name of Bulgaria, and the first dynasty of her sovereigns. Though often at war with the Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarians profited by its neighbourhood so far as to imbibe a certain amount of civilisation. In the ninth century they fought covered

with steel armour; their discipline astonished the veterans of the Empire, and they possessed all the military engines then known. Their kings and czars encouraged literature, and were sometimes themselves authors. As almost all accounts of them come from Byzantine sources there can be little doubt that this portrait is not flattered. Under their more powerful rulers the Bulgarians threatened Constantinople; under the weaker they acknowledged the Byzantine Emperor as suzerain, and more than once Byzantine armies effected a temporary subjection of their land; but their monarchy was not finally overthrown till the end of the fourteenth century, when they were conquered by the Turks. Coins of Bulgaria are to be seen in the museum of Belgrade, and a curious chronicle of Czar Asen has lately been published in modern Bulgarian.

At the Turkish conquest, 1390, Shishman, the last king of Bulgaria, surrendered himself and his capital to the conqueror's mercy; but the people submitted only by degrees, and always on the condition that if they paid tribute to the Sultan they should be free to govern themselves. Their soldiers were commanded by their own voivodes,In modern parlance, generals,—signification cognate with the German Herzog and Latin dux—hence also used for duke. their taxes were collected, and towns and villages ruled by officers of their own choosing. The Bulgarian Church had native Bishops and a Patriarch, residing first at Tirnova then at Ochrida. All this is proved by firmans and berats accorded to them by numerous Sultans.

Those who take the scraps of liberty now-a-days octroyed [sicdestroyed] to the rayah as evidences of a radical change in the maxims of Turkish rule, should bear in mind that far better terms were accorded by Turks to Christians five centuries ago. Those who put faith in Turkish

promises, should inquire how the liberties guaranteed to such Christians as submitted to the first Sultans came to be trampled under foot so soon as the Turks could call themselves masters of the land.

Of the Bulgarian voivodes the most resolute were cut off and the rest left to choose between emigration and apostasy. In 1776 the autonomy of the Church was destroyed, and in place of native bishops of one interest with the people, Greeks were sent from Constantinople, who plundered the peasants, denounced the chief men to Turkish suspicion, set an example of social corruption, and burnt all Slavonic books and MSS. whereon they could lay their hands. The last schools and printing-presses found shelter in the Danubian Principalities; when those lands came under Phanariote,Phanariote: so called from the Phanar, a quarter of Constantinople where the Greek Patriarch resides. The derivation of "Phanar" is variously assigned. government nothing was left to the Bulgarians save some old convents in the recesses of their hills.

Few points are more remarkable in the history of Ottoman rule than the mode in which Turks and Greeks have played into each other's hands. The Sultan could never have crushed the heart out of his Christian subjects without the aid of a Christian middleman, and the Greek has used the brute force of his Mahommedan employer to complement his own cleverness and guile. Under the later emperors Greek dominion was unknown in Slavonic and Rouman lands; whereas under Ottoman sultans, we find Greek prelates and Phanariote princes ruling the Rouman, the Bulgarian, and the Serb. That nationality must be of tough material which gave not way under this double pressure.

The first break in the prison wall was made by the revolution at the beginning of this century. "Free

Greece, autonomous Serbia: may not Bulgaria have her turn?" Gradually the wealthier Bulgarians sent their sons for education no longer to Constantinople, but to Russia, Bohemia, France. In the country itself were founded native schools; and even in districts already half Hellenized the national spirit began to revive. Persons who used to write their own language in the Greek character learned late in life the Slavonic alphabet, and we have ourselves seen parents who spoke Bulgarian imperfectly anxiously providing that their children should know it well. It was the obstacle presented by a foreign hierarchy to these efforts at national development that brought the people to the resolution of freeing their Church from the control of the Phanar.

This temper was taken advantage of by the Roman Propagandists, and emissaries were sent all over Bulgaria, promising self-government and services in Slavonic, with no other condition than that a nominal recognition of the Patriarch should be exchanged for that of the Pope.The contest between Constantinople and Rome for the ecclesiastical supremacy of Bulgaria dates as early as the ninth century, on the plea that the Danubian Provinces were anciently subject to the Archbishopric of Thessalonica, in the times when that archbishopric was immediately dependent on the Papal See. The Bulgarian czars seem to have deferred their choice between the Greek and Latin Churches until they obtained from Constantinople the recognition of a Patriarch of their own. This condition cannot be called hard, and at its first start the Romanist Propaganda was a success. The number of converts has been hugely exaggerated, yet it doubtless included some persons of influence. But the principal bait to the adoption of Catholicism was the promise of sharing the protection of France; and when it became evident that this protection could not be unlimited, nor exempt its protégés from payment of taxes, the new-made Romanists recanted in troops.

Then, too, their leaders became convinced that the movement could have no other effect than to extend to Bulgaria what had already broken the strength of Bosnia and Albania, i.e., a Latin sect, separated from the other Christians, cowering under foreign protection, selling its assistance to the Turks. With these views (we give their own version of the story), and not from any religious sentiment or scruple, many to whom the Propaganda owed its first encouragement withdrew their aid and opposed it with all their might.

But the indifference wherewith the common people had talked of transferring ecclesiastical allegiance proved to the thinkers in Bulgaria that the dangers of division might at any moment recur. For the second time in their church history it was recognised that the South Slavonians would remain in the Eastern Church only on condition of ecclesiastical self-government. If they are to have foreign bishops or a foreign head, it is all one to them whether their Pope resides at Constantinople or Rome.

At this juncture deputies from Bulgaria made their appearance in Constantinople. They came to demand that in virtue of the Hatt-i-Humayoun, their national patriarchate, formerly recognised by the Porte, should be restored, or at least that their Church should be declared autonomous, with native archbishop, bishops, and synod, and an ecclesiastical seminary at Tirnova. In short, they desired such a system of church government as succeeds admirably in the Principality of Serbia. It is years since the Bulgarians put in their claim, but the Turk is in no hurry to remove a cause of quarrel between his Christian subjects. With great subtlety he has tried to improve the occasion by hinting to the Bulgarians that they had better secede from the Eastern Church.

They have been told that by the treaty of Adrianople the Greek Patriarch is declared head of all the Orthodox communities in Turkey. "Be Catholic," says the Mahommedan judge, "or Protestants, or set up a sect of your own, and we will recognise you with pleasure; so long as you call yourselves 'Orthodox' we must know you only as Greeks."

But the Bulgarians avoided the snare. They replied that their demand affected no religious question, that they had no desire to separate themselves from the Orthodox communion. They were perfectly ready to yield the Greek Patriarch recognition as head of the Eastern Church; to be its only Patriarch he had never aspired. His predecessors had acknowledged a Patriarch of Bulgaria till within the last ninety years; he himself at the present moment recognised Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch. Besides, the practical settlement of the business depends, not on the Patriarch, but on the Padishah. When the Bulgarian patriarchate was abolished it was by authority of the Sultan; to this day no prelate throughout the Ottoman Empire can exercise his functions without an imperial firman; and for such a firman a Bulgarian primate, already chosen by the people, was waiting in order to appoint his bishops, convoke his synod, and regulate internal affairs. Give him this, and the Greek Patriarch might defer his recognition so long as it suits his own convenience, while without a firman the recognition of the Greek Patriarch would be of no practical effect.

This statement places the Ottoman government in an attitude somewhat different from that which has been claimed for it; for it has been usually represented as striving vainly to reconcile Christians in a religiousdispute, wherein it may mediate but not interfere.

No doubt, however, the Greek Patriarch might have done much to avoid an appeal to Mahommedan authority, and would have best consulted the interests of his own community by agreeing to accept the proffered recognition together with a fixed tribute.Though some progress has lately been made towards a formal understanding ng between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Bulgarian Church, recent confusions have prevented any real settlement. The Patriarch has declared his willingness to recognise the virtual independence of the Bulgarian Church, his own primacy, which has never been questioned, of course being retained. But he has limited the area to the territory north of the Balkan Mountains, which will be governed by an Exarch or Patriarch residing at Sophia. The Bulgarians contend that the independence should regard race, not territory; in which case a large portion of country between the southern slope of the Balkan Mountains and the Ægean Sea would be included within the rule of the Exarch of Bulgaria. Greek susceptibilities have as yet prevented this arrangement from being accepted at the Patriarchate. But it must ever be remembered that in a post so important as that of the Constantinopolitan chair none but a pliant agent is tolerated by the Turk. Certain it is, that the Patriarch then in office behaved equally unworthily and unwisely. Three bishops (Hilarion, Accentios, and Paissios,) had declared themselves ready to resign their sees in Bulgaria unless confirmed therein by the choice of the people. They might have been used as mediators; on the contrary, they were seized and sent into exile. All such Bulgarians as did not accept the Patriarch's terms were anathematized and declared heretics.

By such measures the formidable wrath of a slow stubborn people has been thoroughly roused. The Patriarch who excommunicated them they have renounced; rather than receive his bishops, communities declare they will remain without any; should a Greek venture to impose himself upon them they resist him by every means in their power.

A series of scandals took place throughout the Provinces. Churches were closed, in order that the Greek liturgy might not be read therein. When the Greek

bishops returned from their revenue-gathering progresses they found their palaces locked and were conducted beyond the city walls. If they entered a church to officiate, no Bulgarian priest would take part in the service; when they departed the floor was ostentatiously swept, as if to remove traces of impurity, In Sophia, when a new bishop was expected, men, women, and children filled the palace and blocked it up, till, unarmed as they were, they had to be expelled by Turkish soldiers. The bishop then dwelt in isolation, until, on occasion of a burial, he got hold of a Bulgarian priest and demanded why he did not come to see him. The priest answered that he must stand by his flock; that as it would not acknowledge the bishop neither could he. Thereupon the priest's beard was shorn, the fez of the dead man stuck on his head, and he was turned out into the streets as a warning and a sign. Again the unarmed citizens rose; shops were shut, houses evacuated, thousands of people prepared to leave Sophia. Their elders waited on the pasha and said, "Either the Greek bishop must go or we." The pasha advised the prelate to withdraw, and as the authorities in Constantinople would not permit the people to elect a new one Sophia resolved to do without a bishop at all.For some further details see "Donan-Bulgarian und der Balkan." Kanitz, Leipzig, 1875.

At Nish, a town on the Serbian frontier, the bishops anticipated an inimical demonstration by accusing the elders of the Bulgarian community of a plot to join the Serbs. The elders were called before the pasha, and without a hearing, without being allowed to say farewell to their families or to send home for extra clothing, they were hurried into carriages and sent off into banishment. This occurred in the depth of winter, and when in the ensuing August we were hospitably received by

the family of one of the exiles, they besought us to apply to some English consul to learn if their relatives were yet alive.

Meanwhile a variety of evils pressed on Bulgaria—outbreaks of haiduks, some political outlaws, some highwaymen—influx of Mahommedan Tartars from the Crimea, for whom the Bulgarians were forced to build houses and provide food—emigration of Bulgarians to Russia, succeeded by their destitute return—attempt of other Bulgarians to get off to Serbia, frustrated by the Turkish authorities—finally, a shoal of Bashi-bazouks turned loose among the villagers, on pretext of guarding the frontier from the Serbs.The Bulgarian horrors of 1875 are the intense aggravation of a chronic condition. They could astonish no one personally acquainted with the interior of the country. In the summer of 1862 we were witnesses to this state of things. Another means resorted to for holding down the Bulgarian is the introduction of Mahommedan colonists, who replenish the declining Mussulman population, and are kept well supplied with arms, of which the Christian is deprived. Since the Tartars, Circassians have been introduced, and the idea has been adopted of planting them along the frontier of Serbia, so as to bar off the Bulgarians. The Tartars were only idle, whereas these new immigrants come thirsting to avenge their own sufferings on all who bear the Christian name. It is said, however, that the Circassian mountaineers do not thrive on the Bulgarian plains and are rapidly decreasing in number.

In Constantinople we heard a good deal of the Bulgarian question—the Greek side of it from the Patriarch and his secretary, the Slavonic side from the Bulgarian deputies. Each party supported its arguments in pamphlets swarming with protestations of loyalty to the Sultan, and taunting its antagonists as emissaries of

Russia. Russia in Turkey plays the part of "cat" in a careless household; being charged with the doing of all mischief by those who wish to exonerate themselves.

As to probably impartial judges, we appealed to the opinion of foreign residents; these, especially French, British, and American, gave their verdict for the Bulgarians. British consuls assured us they were astonished to find a population in Turkey so industrious, thrifty, moral, and clean. As for the Americans, in a quiet way they are the best friends the Bulgarians have. Their eminent scholar, Dr. Riggs, has rendered the Old Testament from ancient into modern Slavonic, and numerous school-books have been translated from the English; American schools are in the Bulgarian principal towns, and their books are sold by native colporteurs in several parts of the country.

During our own travels we saw proofs enough that the people are trying to improve, and we were especially struck with their eagerness for education. The mountain chains of the Balkan and the Rhodope divide Bulgaria into three sections—northern, central, and southern. Of the northern district, between the Balkan and the Danube, we cannot speak from eye-witness, as the Turks declared it too disturbed for travellers; but we say, on the authority of persons who have lived there, that those Bulgarians who grow up with the great waterway of commerce on one side of them and their natural mountain fortresses on the other are more independent and enterprising than their brethren on the inland plains. Here, too, the people maintain numerous schools, of which the best are at Tirnova and Shumla. Tirnova, the ancient capital, is the site proposed for an ecclesiastical seminary, and if possible for a printing press, both of which the jealousy of the Porte as yet denies.

Central Bulgaria is that which lies between the ranges of the Balkan and the Rhodope. Here we visited the schools of Adrianople, Philippopolis, Samakoff, Sophia, Nish,—all supported and managed by the Christian communities without pecuniary aid from the government or bishops. The school-houses, mostly of good size and airy, are, like everything in Bulgaria, clean. The school-books, gathered from various sources, are eked out with those of the American Board of Missions. To conciliate the Turks, Turkish is frequently taught to a scholar or two, and phrases complimentary to the Sultan have been framed into a sort of school hymn. True, the same tune has another set of words in honour of him who shall deliver the country from Turkish rule. One or other version is sung before the visitor, according as he is judged to be Christian or Turcophile. We had opportunities of hearing both.

At Philippopolis, Samakoff, and Sophia, there are girls' schools. That at Sophia was founded by a patriotic citizen.In 1877 we found a young relative of this patriotic merchant among the Bulgarian students at Agram in Croatia. Ten lads and four girls had been sent to the excellent schools in this town before the recent disasters in Bulgaria, and are still continuing their studies, in spite of the privations consequent on the cutting off of remittances from home. We were glad to be able to render them some timely help from a sum entrusted to us especially for Bulgarians. The young girl from Sophia told me that the schoolhouse built by Hadji Traiko had been seized by the Turks and turned into a barrack for soldiers. In his own words: "When my wife died and left me but one son I resolved not to marry again, but to give all my money and attention to this school." He has brought a female teacher all the way from the Austrian border, for Slavonic trained schoolmistresses are hard to find in Turkey.

Southern Bulgaria lies, as we have already indicated, between the Rhodope and the frontiers of ancient Greece. Such schools as we there visited were smaller and poorer than elsewhere, but we did not see those of

Istib and other towns lying on the more northerly route between Salonica and Skopia. Those on the line of our journey we will notice as we proceed.

Throughout the places we have hitherto mentioned, the Greek Bishop contents himself with ignoring the Bulgarian school, or from time to time expelling an energetic teacher; but nearer the Græco-Slāv boundary we found Slavonic education positively impeded. In Vodena and Yenidjé a Greek school is founded, and the community must needs support it; in case poverty should not be sufficient to deter them from supporting also one of their own, every possible hindrance is thrown in the way.

One result of this anti-national policy is, that the Bulgarians, elsewhere so eager to learn, are in these districts listless and dull; another result is, that being alienated from their own clergy, they lend an ear to. overtures from Rome. Some of them calculate on using Latin aid to get rid of the Patriarch, and then finding means to get rid of the Pope; others still fear that the yoke they know not may prove heavier than the yoke they know. In Monastir the UnionistsThe name Unionist is given to communities which retain the Oriental rite while they acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. had a school, and at Yenidjé they were building a church.

Meanwhile, in the neighbourhood of Salonica, awakes a party which bethinks itself that Protestants acknowledge neither Pope nor Patriarch, and that the protection of England would do as well as that of France. The question is asked whether, supposing they became Protestants, England would take them under her wing. For answer they get an emphatic "No." Still they turn to the Protestant clergyman at Salonica, and beg that he will procure for them books and teachers in their own tongue, duly offering to pay for both.