for national expression
in its rowdy life. But I did get to a strong admiration of the Bulgarian
people as soldiers, farmers, road-makers, and as friends. The evidence
on which that admiration is based will be stated in these pages, and it
is my hope that it will do a little to set the Bulgarian--who is
sometimes much overpraised and often much over-abused--in a right light
before my readers.

But before dealing with the Bulgarian of to-day we must look into his
antecedents.

CHAPTER II

BULGARIA AND THE DEATH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Probably not the least part of the interest which the traveller or the
student will take in Bulgaria is the fact that it was the arena in
which were fought the great battles of races declaring the doom of the
Roman Empire. Fortunately, from old Gothic chronicles it is possible
to get pictures--valuable for vivid colouring rather than strict
accuracy--which bring very close to us that curious tragedy of
civilisation, the destruction of the power of Rome and the overrunning
of Europe by successive waves of barbarians.

In the fifth century before Christ, what is now Bulgaria was practically
a Greek colony, and its trading relations with the North gave possibly
the first hint to the Goths of the easiest path by which to invade the
Roman Empire. The present Bulgarian towns of Varna (on the Black Sea)
and Kustendji (which has a literary history in that it was later a place
of banishment for Ovid the poet) can be traced back as Greek trading
towns through which passed traffic from the Mediterranean to the
"Scythians," _i.e._ the Goths of the North. Amber and furs came from the
north of the river valleys, and caravans from the south brought in
return silver and gold and bronze.

Towards the dawn of the Christian era there began a swelling-over of the
Goths from the Baltic shores, sending one wave of invasion down towards
Italy, another towards the Black Sea and the Aegean. Jordanes, the
earliest Gothic historian, writing in the sixth century gives this
account--derived from Gothic folk-songs--of the movement of the invasion
towards the Balkan Peninsula (probably about A.D. 170):

In the reign of the fifth King after Berig, Filimer, son of
Gadariges, the people had so greatly increased in numbers that
they all agreed in the conclusion that the army of the Goths
should move forward with their families in quest of more fitting
abodes. Thus they came to those regions