[44] Pach. iv. 3.
[45] Ibid. iv. 6.
[46] That this aversion to agriculture, and contentment amid poverty, of the Turkish peasant are not merely the result of Mahometanism, is evidenced by the fact that the Pomaks—that is, the Bulgarians who have accepted Islam—and the Mahometans of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who have emigrated into Asia Minor since the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, are noticed everywhere to be distinguished by their comparative energy and by the success they are achieving in various forms of agricultural pursuits.
[47] Pach. vi. 21.
[48] iv. 21.
[49] Gregoras states that the Turkish ships employed by Andronicus plundered all the coasts and the islands (viii. 10). Chalcondylas claims that Othman with eight thousand Turks who occupied the Thracian Chersonesus was entirely defeated.
[50] It is usually impossible to arrive at the correct estimate of the numbers of the invaders, but it may be said once for all that, while they were undoubtedly very large, the figures given by the Greek authors are seldom trustworthy.
[51] Sir John Maundeville, who visited Constantinople in 1322, remarks on the diminution of the empire: ‘For he was emperor of Romania and of Greece, of all Asia the Less, and of the land of Syria, of the land of Persia and Arabia, but he hath lost all but Greece’ (Early Travels in Palestine, p. 130).
[52] Cant. ii. 9, 14, 15; Greg. ix. 10, xiii. 3; Ducas, vi.