Further details respecting the Turk intrusions into Eastern Europe still stand over.
So do certain further questions respecting the Asiatic conquests of the Sarmatians.
They will be considered in the ethnology of Turkey.
The origin of the name Russ, however, requires a present notice. The word itself is Ugrian, but it became attached to the empire of Russia through the conquests of the Swedes. Certain Swedes, in the ninth century, having invaded the country of the (then) Ugrian Rhoxolani, extended their conquests so far southwards as to reach the Black Sea on the one side, and the Caspian on the other. They were objects of terror to the Byzantians; and in a curious passage of Constantine Porphyrogeneta we learn that the Falls of the Dnieper had two names, one Russ, and one Slavonic—Russ meaning Swedish or Norse. So that an undetermined amount of Swedish blood must be given to the Muscovite and Malorussian areas, as well as to the Baltic Provinces; and a time must be recognized when the word Russ meant the Norse conqueror of the parts on the Dnieper and Volga, in opposition to the conquered Slavonian. At the same time the Norse Russ was Russian only as an Anglo-Saxon of Kent was a Briton. He was a settler in the land of the older Slavonians and the still older Ugrian Rhoxolani.
CHAPTER VII.
WALLACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.—RUMANYOS.—PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.—DESCENT FROM THE DACI.—SARMATIAN ORIGIN.—SERVIA.—MONTENEGRO.
Wallachia and Moldavia.—The Wallachians and Moldavians are in the same relations to the Romans and ancient Daci as the French are to the Romans and Kelts, or the Spaniards to the Romans and Iberians. Like the degenerate Greeks of the Byzantine empire, they call themselves Roman; and their language, like the Rumonsch of the Grisons and the Romaic of modern Hellas, is Romane.
As the two principalities represent only a portion of the ancient Dacia, the ethnological and political divisions differ; for, though all Wallachians and all Moldavians are Rumanyos the whole of the Rumanyos are not Wallachian and Moldavian. They are also indigenous to Transylvania and Bukhovinia. In Bulgaria, Thrace, and Macedonia, there are, probably, intruders. Light made, with dark skins, black eyes, and prominent features, they stand in strong contrast to both the Russians and the Slovaks, with which they are in geographical contact. Nor is it safe to refer this to Roman blood, since, according to Mr. Paget, the Dacians of Trajan’s column have similar features—at least as far as the profile goes, and as far as the description of a Transylvanian Rumanyo applies to those of Wallachia and Moldavia.
Of all the districts on the Danube, Wallachia and Moldavia have been the least disturbed during the last sixteen centuries. This, though it is saying but little for a country in the most afflicted part of Europe, is the inference from the continued existence of their language. Displaced in all the other Danubian provinces it is still the native tongue to upwards of 200,000 protected and half independent Rumanyi.
In detail, the ancient inhabitants of Wallachia were the Potulatensii, the Sensii, the Salrensii, the Kiageisi, and the Piephagi of Strabo.