Another Macedonian traveller was the highly distinguished Frenchman,
Ami Boue. His great book _La Turquie d'Europe_, in four volumes of
more than 500 pages each, appeared in Paris in 1840, and is a
veritable encyclopaedia with which no other publication of the same
kind can be compared, either for the largeness of his scheme, the
versatility of his interests or the profound knowledge of his subject.
Well, he found that many Slavs of Macedonia, whom he calls Bulgars,
had their hopes centred in Milo[vs], who was then the reigning Serbian
Prince. The difference in their eyes between the two people was that
the Serbs had gained their independence. It was not as great an
independence as the Macedonians fancied, for in addition to the
vexatious remains of Turkish suzerainty there was the Greek
ecclesiastical rule. During the reigns of Kara George and Milo[vs] the
Greeks insisted on having their language used for the liturgy in all
the Serbian towns, especially in Belgrade; after that period Greek and
Slav were used for half the service each, and this practice was
continued until 1858. Nevertheless for the unhappy Macedonians Serbia
was a land of radiant liberty. And whether it was going to be a Serb
or Bulgar who would rescue them--_qu'importe_? Ami Boue noted, as have
many others, that the Macedonian Slav in his physical characteristics,
in his language, in his outlook, in his native habits and in the
expression of his sentiments is intermediate between the Serbs and
Bulgars. And he says that as between the Serbs and Bulgars he does not
recognize a greater difference than there is between the Istrians, the
Dalmatians and the Croats, which is to say that there is none.
This point of view was quite familiar to the readers of the
_Omladinac_. Svetozar Markovi['c], a leader of both Radicals and
Socialists in Serbia, was for a federated Balkan republic. Ljuben
Karaveloff wrote articles in Serbian, whose object was to show that,
in the liberation of the Southern Slavs, Serbia must take the lead.
Rakovski, the most active of Bulgarian Radicals, maintained that, in
default of union between the Southern Slavs, a selfish interference of
the Great Powers in the Balkans and unceasing wars among the natives
would be unavoidable. The ideas of Bogdanov regarding the Bulgarian
and Serbian languages were current. "It is not a tower of Babel," says
he, "but a temple of God. When we are united there will be no curse
yelled in a hundred voices but a harmonious prayer." And in another
passage he declares that "there is less difference, for example,
between Serbian and Bulgarian than between certain Italian dialects."