In Moldavia, there had been a displacement as early as the time of Herodotus.
The Skoloti of Russia reached the Carpathians, inasmuch as they were conterminous with the Agathyrsi, and the Agathyrsi were on the Maros, i.e., in Transylvania.
Whether the Skoloti extended thus far westward, when Trajan conquered Decebalus is uncertain. I think that during the interval between the time of Herodotus and the Dacian war, the Skoloti had either retired or become amalgamated; so that the Dacian population lay in one large uniform mass from the Vallum Romanum in Hungary to the Solitude of the Getæ in Bessarabia. The reasons for this are drawn from the language.
1. This is uniform throughout, and uniformity of speech in the case of exotic languages, is primâ facie evidence of the uniformity in both the tongue which is introduced and the original tongue of the country. For identical fruits we must have like stocks as well as like grafts. The Roman in a Keltic country becomes French; in an Iberic, Spanish.
2. The terminations -ensii and -dava are common to the whole Dacian area—Predan-ensii, Rhatac-ensii, Alboc-ensii, Burid-ensii, Potulat-ensii, Satr-ensii, S-ensii, Cot-ensii, Cauco-ensii—Comi-dava, Perobori-dava, Rhami-dava, Neter-dava, Burri-dava, Argi-dava, &c.
Of the uniformity of language no country, of which the early history is equally obscure, shows stronger proofs than ancient Dacia.
The reasons for believing this to have been Sarmatian will be given in the sequel.
Tolerably pure, for a Danubian population, the Rumanyos of Wallachia are Romano-Slavonic. In Moldavia there is a trace of Turk (Skolotic) blood.
Servia.—Our divisions are political; so Servia, as an independent principality, must be dealt with by itself; and as, from their complexity, the Austrian and Ottoman empires are reserved for the last, it will be separated from the areas with which it is most immediately connected—Southern Hungary and Bosnia.
Bounded by the rivers Drin and Timoc, the present principality coincides nearly, though not quite, with the Roman Province of Mœsia Superior.