Even the ingrained feudalism of the Albanians will vanish under the modernizing influence of roads and railways, and their picturesqueness fade under the glamour of successful commercial enterprise. No doubt those days are yet some distance off when peace and prosperity will reign over the Balkan Peninsula, but even the Albanians, individually very capable of perceiving where advantage lies, will be brought into the ordered state of affairs so dear to those kind neighbours, the Great Powers.
However, as the change is not likely to be rapid, Europe will have to make up its mind to a good deal more turmoil before Albania ceases to cause trouble in the Balkans.
Yet another people are to be found in the Turkish provinces of Europe, wandering about with their herds among the divers nations who have settled there, but not of them. These are the Vlachs, but they have many other designations, for the Greeks are pleased to call them Kambisi (from kampos), Karaguli or Karaguni (black coats), Vlachopimeni, or Arvanitovlachi; in Albania they are called Cobani, in Macedonia Cobani, and by the Bulgars Vlasi, a name under which they stand recorded on mediæval Servian monuments. The papers generally speak of them as Koutzo-Vlachs. “Koutzo” means halting, lame, though the description seems inaccurate, for they are confirmed nomads, and cover a deal of ground during the year. They are chiefly shepherds, and they wander about Macedonia, Thessaly, and Thrace in search of pasture for their black-coated sheep, from which derives the nickname Crnovunçi, given them by the Serbs. Others, again, act as carriers in those districts unopened as yet by railways, leading strings of ponies over the defiles that separated Servia and Bulgaria from the Turkish provinces until recent days. They seem to be of Roumanian origin, and speak a language akin to that of Roumania, which claims to protect them, and of their history little is known. They have always been wanderers, and never showed any inclination towards a settled existence. It has been tried on them by King Milutin of Servia in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and records of that time make mention of several Vlack villages by the southern banks of the Danube.
When the Turks conquered Servia these nomads vanished from their settlements, and no one knows whither they went. It is probable that they resumed their migratory habits in Macedonia and Thessaly, not visiting Servia again until comparatively recent times, when the Russo-Serb war broke out in 1876. Up to this date they are said to have sojourned in Bulgaria, whither, it is stated, they wandered from Epirus and Thessaly, to escape from Ali Pasha’s heavy hand. A few, a very few, settled in Macedonia, about Monastir, Krushevo, and at the foot of Olympus. The Vlachs appear to be a pleasant, harmless people, and absolutely indifferent to the troubles which have so long agitated the peoples of the Balkans.
Now that the Balkan provinces of Turkey, where the Vlachs have wandered for centuries, are passing into other hands, the status of this people is becoming a matter of interest. As the Balkan nations, Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks are insisting so fiercely on their respective nationalities, Roumania has thought fit to espouse the cause of the Vlachs. No doubt this intention is born of a sincere desire for the welfare of those whom the Roumanians consider kinsmen, but the idea is of political value in that it gives a reason for the modern tendency of claiming compensation, an innovation so forcibly introduced by the arrival of the S.M.S. “Panther” off Agadir.
It will be interesting to note to what extent the wandering Vlachs will benefit by the protection of Roumania, and what they themselves think of it. Was it to safeguard their interests that Roumania sent its one and only sea-going warship to swell the international fleet in the Golden Horn while the Turkish Empire in Europe was falling to pieces?