Bulgaria | Page 4

without being watered. So this was the extent of the Turk's devotion to

his horses!
It was necessary to be firm, and I took up the cart whip to the Turk and
convinced him almost at once that the horses were not "too tired" to
drink.
Mr. Turk did not resent the blows in the least. He refrained from
cutting my throat as I slept that evening. Afterwards a mere wave of the
hand towards the whip made him move with alacrity. At the end of the
journey, when I gave him a good "tip," he knelt down gallantly in the
mud of Mustapha Pasha and kissed my hand and carried it to his
forehead.
So faded away my last hope of meeting the Terrible Turk of tradition in
the Balkans. Perhaps he exists still in Asia Minor. As I saw the Turk in
Bulgaria and in European Turkey, he was a dull monogamic person
with no fiery pride, no picturesque devilry, but a great passion for
sweetmeats--not merely his own "Turkish Delight," but all kinds of
lollipops: his shops were full of Scotch and English confectionery.
But the Bulgarian, not the Turk, is our theme. This introduction,
however, will make it plain that, as the result of a direct knowledge of
the Balkans, during some months in which I had the opportunity of
sharing in Bulgarian peasant life, I came to the admiration I have now
for the Bulgarian people in spite of a preliminary prejudice. And this
conversion of view was not the result of becoming involved in some
passionate political attitude regarding Balkan affairs. I am not now
prepared to take up the view of the fanatic Bulgar-worshippers who
must not only exalt the Bulgarian nation as a modern Chosen People,
but must represent Servian, Greek, and Turk as malignant and devilish
in order to throw up in the highest light their ideas of Bulgarian
saintliness.
The Balkans are apt to have strange effects on the traveller. Perhaps it
is the blood-mist that hangs always over the Balkan plains and glens
which gets into the head and intoxicates one: perhaps it is the call to the
wild in us from the primitive human nature of the Balkan peoples.
Whatever the reason, it is a common thing for the unemotional English

traveller to go to the Balkans as a tourist and return as a passionate
enthusiast for some Balkan Peninsula nationality. He becomes, perhaps,
a pro-Turk, and thereafter will argue with fierceness that the Turk is the
only man who leads an idyllic life in Europe to-day, and that the way to
human regeneration is through a conversion to Turkishness. He fills his
house with Turkish visitors and writes letters to the papers pointing out
the savagery we show in the "Turk's Head" competition for our
cavalry-men at military tournaments. Or he may become a pro-Bulgar
with a taste for the company of highly flavoured Macedonian
revolutionary priests and a grisly habit of turning the conversation to
the subject of outrage and massacre. To become a pro-Servian is not a
common fashion, but pro-Albanians and pro-Montenegrins and
Philhellenists are common enough.
The word "crank," if it can be read in a kindly sense and stripped of
malice, covers all these folk. Exactly why the Balkans have such an
effect in making "cranks" I have already confessed an inability to
explain. The fact must stand as one of those things which we must
believe--if we read Parliamentary debates and newspaper
correspondence--but cannot comprehend.
But any "crank" view I disavow. Whether from a natural lack of a
generous sense of partisanship, or a journalistic training (which crabs
emotionalism: that acute observer of men, the late "General" Booth,
said once of his Salvation Army work, "You can never 'save' a
journalist"), I came back from the Balkans without a desire to join a
society to exalt any one of the little nationalities struggling for national
expression in its rowdy life. But I did get to a strong admiration of the
Bulgarian people as soldiers, farmers, road-makers, and as friends. The
evidence on which that admiration is based will be stated in these pages,
and it is my hope that it will do a little to set the Bulgarian--who is
sometimes much overpraised and often much over-abused--in a right
light before my readers.
But before dealing with the Bulgarian of to-day we must look into his
antecedents.

CHAPTER II
BULGARIA AND THE DEATH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Probably not the least part of the interest which the traveller or the
student will take in Bulgaria is the fact that it was the arena in which
were fought the great battles of races declaring the doom of the Roman
Empire. Fortunately, from old Gothic chronicles it is possible to get
pictures--valuable for vivid colouring rather than