The nation was divided into two
powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each other with fraternal
hatred. They eagerly disputed the friendship, or rather the gifts, of
the emperor; and the distinctions which nature had fixed between the
faithful dog and the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who
received only verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate
prince. The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted
by Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian name,
and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic Sea, or the
extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same race of Sclavonians
appears to have maintained, in every age, the possession of the same
countries. Their numerous tribes, however distant or adverse, used one
common language, (it was harsh and irregular,) and where known by the
resemblance of their form, which deviated from the swarthy Tartar, and
approached without attaining the lofty stature and fair complexion of
the German. Four thousand six hundred villages were scattered over the
provinces of Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built of
rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron. Erected,
or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the banks of rivers,
or the edges of morasses, we may not perhaps, without flattery, compare
them to the architecture of the beaver; which they resembled in a double
issue, to the land and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitant,
an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social, than that
marvellous quadruped. The fertility of the soil, rather than the labor
of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians. Their
sheep and horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which
they sowed with millet or panic afforded, in place of bread, a coarse
and less nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their neighbors
compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but on the appearance
of a stranger, it was freely imparted by a people, whose unfavorable
character is qualified by the epithets of chaste, patient, and
hospitable. As their supreme god, they adored an invisible master of the
thunder. The rivers and the nymphs obtained their subordinate honors,
and the popular worship was expressed in vows and sacrifice. The
Sclavonians disdained to obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate;
but their experience was too narrow, their passions too head