Kiepert, the famous geographer, was able, as the result of his
diligent researches and explorations, to correct many errors in former
ethnological maps; but in the map of the Balkan Peninsula, which he
published in 1870, the country between Kustendil, Trn and Vranja is
represented by a white space. And if the people who dwell in these
wild, narrow valleys had been overlooked as thoroughly by subsequent
Congresses and Frontier Commissions they would have been most
grateful. They only asked--this well-built, stubborn race--that one
should leave them to their own devices in their homes among the
mountains where the lilac grows. They asked that one should leave them
with their ancient superstitions, such as that of St. Petka, who
inhabited a cavern high above the present road from Trn, while St.
Therapon, so they say, lived by himself upon a neighbouring rock.
Inside the cavern now the water drips continuously and is collected in
large bowls; these are St. Petka's tears, which are particularly
beneficial, say the natives, for afflicted eyes. But though this
region is so poor that, towards the end of the Turkish regime and
during the war of Bulgarian liberation and also in the winter of
1879-80, the people were compelled, through lack of flour, to use a
sort of "white earth," _bela zemja_, yet this land was coveted, and
now the maps no longer show an empty space but a variety of names and
a frontier line. From the nomenclature we perceive that the region was
visited of old by people who were not Slavs--such were those who gave
to a mountain the name of Ruj, to a village the name of Erul, and to a
river the name of Jerma, which has been explained as being derived
from the Lydian Hermos, the river of St. Therapon's birthplace. The
names of Latin colouring may either be memorials of the Romanized
Thracians or else may refer to the mediaeval Catholics, whether Saxon
miners or travelling merchants. But there does not seem in the veins
of the present population to be much trace of these other settlers or
wayfarers; at any rate, the Slavs do not differ appreciably among
themselves, and the drawing of a frontier line has been a peculiar
hardship.
One of the greatest misfortunes of the nineteenth century was the
creation of separate Serbian and Bulgarian kingdoms, wherein there was
so small an ethnological difference between these two branches of the
Yugoslavs; and in those districts where a frontier runs one sees
especially how criminal it was to make this separation. Balkan
philologists to-day will tell you--and even those who are in other
respects the most rabid Serbs or Bulgars--that there is really no such
thing as a Serbian and a Bulgarian language, but only groups of
Yugoslav dialects. And yet it pleased the Great Powers to prevent the
union of the two Balkan brothers. In that region with which we are
dealing the Berlin Congress attempted to draw, with very inadequate
maps, a frontier line along the watershed; and the Commissioners who
were sent to mark out this line, observing that many of the indicated
points did not coincide with the watershed, thought it would be
preferable to trace the frontier along the saddle, between the
tributaries of the Morava on one side and of the Struma and the river
of Trn on the other. As the region was, however, not uninhabited the
farmers were frequently cut off, as at Topli Dol and Preseka, from the
meadows and the forests which they had regarded always as their own.
Bismarck, speaking with indifference of "the fragments of nations that
inhabit the Balkan Peninsula," could see in the national yearning of
the Yugoslavs only a yearning for lawlessness and tumult. So he
laboured at his plan of dominating Europe with the mighty structure of
the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian conservative empires; and if
he built it over a stream of democracy, with results that are to-day
apparent, who knows whether the statesmen of our day are not somewhere
constructing a house which to our descendants will appear equally
ridiculous? And anyhow, as we shall see, he was far from being the
only offender at the Berlin Congress. If that particular strip of
frontier had been drawn in the most unimpeachable fashion it would
still have been iniquitous.
One may object that even if the people were divided by rough-and-ready
methods, that was no reason why they should oppose each other, and
indeed a number of frontier incidents which occurred between the time
of the Congress and 1885 were not regarded, either by Serbs or by
Bulgars, as being serious obstacles to a union. But Russia and
Austria, revelling in the intrigues, continued to pull the two States
now this way and now that, and all too frequently against each other.
It can thus not be a matter of surprise if the rather inexperienced
statesmen of those little countries fell into line with the two Great
Powers and spent a good deal of their energies in assailing each
other. So blind, alas! were these statesmen that all the tears of St.
Petka would not have cured them, and now the two kindred people, so
progressive in many ways, are--to speak of each people as a
whole--further apart than when their shaggy forefathers came over the
Carpathians. It has been the fate of the Yugoslavs--Slovenes, Croats,
Serbs and Bulgars--to live for centuries beside each other and be kept
always, by foreign masters, isolated from each other. At rare
intervals, as we shall see in following their history, a person has
arisen who has tried, with altruistic or with selfish motives, to make
some sort of union of the Yugoslavs. And now we will go back to the
time when Slavs first wandered westward to the Balkans.
I