Attached to the palace of the Bulgarian czars were gardens filled with fruit trees and flowering plants whose traces still remain until the present day. Wherever the earth is turned or a cellar is dug for a new building, vestiges of former grandeur and sometimes relics of the Roman occupation are disclosed. Lying by the roadside are mutilated remains of marble pillars and pedestals; capitals with bulls’ heads and wreaths exquisitely carved; discs of glazed pottery and gilded glass; pieces of molding with bronze still clinging to them; quartz enameled with colors and gold, and sometimes fragments of plaster still retaining the colors of a fresco.
X
THE PEOPLE OF BULGARIA
Bulgaria is about as big as Pennsylvania, has a similar shape, and reminds one very much of that State, because of the resemblance in topography and other physical features. The forests and the rivers watering rich valleys, the mountain ranges, the rocky ledges, and the landscape generally are very much like the Quaker State. The population is about thirty per cent less. The Danube River forms the northern boundary of Bulgaria, and much of the produce of the state goes out, and much of its imported merchandise comes in upon enormous barges towed in strings from Budapest and from Vienna. Austria monopolizes the trade in manufactured merchandise. During the summer season the passenger steamers on the Danube offer a very pleasant voyage through Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria and Roumania to the Black Sea, but in the dry season in the fall the water is low, fogs are frequent and the air is too cool to sit on the deck, hence a trip by train is more agreeable. You can go to Sofia from Vienna by rail in twenty-four hours in comfortable sleeping-cars and good dining-cars, in which table d’hôte meals are served at city prices, but the fares are very high.
The Orient Express, which is the great railway train of Europe, and runs from Calais and Ostend through Germany and France to Constantinople three times a week, is a pretentious humbug when judged by American standards. The distance between Vienna and Sofia is about the same as between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, but it takes twice as long to make the journey, and the fare is about four times as much. The extra fare, or supplement, as they call it, demanded for the privilege of riding upon this famous train, is forty-four francs between those two cities, or $8.40, which is about full fare between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, and instead of getting a wide berth in a Pullman sleeper for $2 you have to pay $3.80 for a night’s lodging in a stuffy little closet. The beds are comfortable, but the space is so narrow that it is scarcely safe to roll over, and the only way to ventilate the compartment is to open a window directly over your head. The ordinary trains are only two hours slower than the Orient Express; they are equally well equipped, run every day and the charge is only about one-half as much.
Bulgaria has several railroads, running to the Black Sea, to Bucharest and to Salonika on the Mediterranean, in addition to the trunk line to Constantinople. They belong to the government, and seem to be well managed, although they make very slow time. The Orient Express sometimes works up a speed of twenty miles an hour, but averages about eighteen, and that is considered remarkable. The entire railway system aggregates nine hundred and nine miles, with one hundred and thirty miles of new track under construction. Telephone and telegraph wires, belonging to the government, are stretched all over the country, the telephone service being a great improvement upon that of Germany, which, however, is the worst I have ever found—so bad that foreigners will not use a telephone if they can possibly avoid it. I have often thought that perhaps some of the German parts of speech are too big to send over an ordinary wire, that perhaps the wear and tear of the telephone instruments is too great for them to endure; but an eminent professor in the University of Berlin, to whom I suggested this one evening, thought I was in earnest and punished my impudence by holding me up in a corner for half an hour while he demonstrated the absurdity of the proposition. Moral—Never try to joke with German professors.
The eastern boundary of Bulgaria is the Black Sea; on the west is the Kingdom of Servia, and on the south the Rhodope chain of mountains divides it from the Turkish province of Eastern Rumelia, or Macedonia, as that portion situated south of Bulgaria is commonly called. The Balkan Mountains, like the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, bisect the country and divide it into two provinces. In some parts we find beautiful undulating landscapes and at intervals long expanses of elevated plateaus varying from twelve hundred to two thousand feet above the sea, which lie between the mountain ranges. These plains are irrigated and drained by several important streams, the most interesting being the Jantra, which winds among the mountains through high limestone gorges, and furnishes a picturesque feature to the topography. There are no large cities in Bulgaria, but several important towns, each of which has its marked peculiarities:
| POPULATION | |
| Sofia | 46,593 |
| Rustchuk | 37,174 |
| Tirnova | 25,295 |
| Shumla | 23,517 |
| Plevna | 23,178 |
| Razgrad | 21,551 |
| Orehovo | 20,054 |
| Philippopolis | 41,068 |
| Varna | 28,174 |
| Orehovitsa | 25,013 |
| Slivno | 23,210 |
| Tatar Pazarjik | 22,056 |
| Vidin | 29,044 |
There are several other towns of less than twenty thousand and more than ten thousand population, but three-fourths of the inhabitants are engaged in agricultural and pastoral pursuits, most of them being small farmers, cultivating from one to six acres, and having large flocks and herds which graze at large. Theoretically, the state owns all the land, and the people are tenants with perpetual leases, descending from generation to generation, who pay one-tenth of all their products to the state, usually in kind, in lieu of rental and taxes. The pasture land is free, and is held in common by unwritten and unrecorded titles by those who occupy it with their flocks and herds. The forests have also been free until recently, and anyone who chose to do so was at liberty to cut whatever timber he needed for his own use without payment, but the police exercised a supervisory authority to prevent the wholesale destruction of the trees for commercial purposes. Forty-seven per cent of the entire territory is in pasture, and sheep, goats, cattle, horses and pigs are raised in large numbers. The wool product of Bulgaria is the greatest source of wealth, and is sent to Austria and Germany. The exports of hides and skins are next in value, not less than five million sheep pelts being shipped annually. The principal agricultural product is wheat, which goes to Germany and Turkey, and a very important and profitable industry is the distillation of attar of roses, which is carried on in the provinces bordering on the Black Sea.
The Bulgarians have a language of their own, a sort of dialect of the Russian, which bears the same relation to that language as the Scotch bears to the English. There are Greek letters in their alphabet and Greek words in their vocabulary, but the language is Slavonic. No Bulgarian could understand a Greek, and vice versa, and a Russian peasant could not converse with a Bulgarian peasant any more readily than a Highlander could talk with a costermonger from Whitechapel, because each has his local idioms; but educated Russians and Bulgarians can understand each other even if each talks in his own language. Russians can read Bulgarian newspapers very readily. Philologists are of the opinion that the Bulgarian language is quite as close to the old Slav tongue as the Russian, and it is a curious fact that many words may be traced to the old Thracian and Illyrian tongues. The Slavs drove the original population into the mountains and seized their lands on the plains, but in the second half of the seventh century a horde of uncouth warriors crossed the Danube and subjugated the Slavs, and their descendants have since occupied the territory which bears their name. The Bulgarians are of mysterious origin. The source from which they came has never been satisfactorily determined. Some ethnologists argue that they were Finns, others believe they were Tartars, but the greatest weight of evidence seems to fix their former residence on the banks of the Volga River. They were without a history, which is a singular thing for so vigorous, progressive and intelligent a race. It is a curious coincidence that the Bulgarians lost their language but kept their name, while the Slavs, whom they subdued, lost their name but kept their language.
Sofia, the capital and commercial center, is situated in the southwestern corner of Bulgaria on an elevated plain, at the base of Mount Vitosch, a beautiful peak seven thousand eight hundred feet high. Its head is usually clothed in the clouds, and perpetual snow lies in the wrinkles upon its face. The cloud movements and other atmospheric effects add greatly to its picturesqueness, and in autumn the forests which cover its breast are vivid with scarlet and yellow foliage, which reaches to the snow line and affords a striking and lovely contrast. The base of the mountain is only a few miles from the city, and excursions to it are one of the few amusements in which foreigners can indulge in warm weather. They have very little diversion. There are no theaters—only one little vaudeville show—no concerts, except occasionally by a military band attached to the palace, and only a limited amount of social entertainment. The foreign colony must therefore find its fun in driving, riding, picnicking and playing tennis. Golf has not been introduced, for the natives take little interest in such sports. The foreign colony is small, and limited almost entirely to the diplomatic representatives of the European countries. A few Austrians and Germans are engaged in business affairs, several Belgian engineers run the electric-light and street-car lines, and there are one Englishman and two or three Americans, mostly missionary teachers.