BALKAN PENINSULA, a convenient geographical term applied to the easternmost of the three great peninsulas of southern Europe, of which the others are the Pyrenean or Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), and the Apen nine Peninsula (Italy). In all three cases the names are derived from mountain ranges. But whereas the Pyrenees and Apennines separate their respective peninsulas from central Europe, the Balkan range offers no such dis tinctive geographical division. The Ballcans are a continuation of the Carpathians, pierced by the Danube at the Iron gate, where the fron tiers of Hungary, Serbia and Rumania meet. The name Balkan is apparently of Slavonic origin, but the Bulgarians, to whose country the range is mainly limited, use the term Stara Planirra. Extending from the river Tintole (Serbia) in the west through the heart of Bul garia to the Black Sea, a distance of 375 miles, the Balkans form a line of demarcation for less than half of the northern limits of the penin sula. Assuming that rivers also form a natural boundary, the Balkan Peninsula ends on the right bank of the Danube and its tributaries, the Save and the Una; its western limit is near Fiume on the Adriatic, extending down the Ionian Sea to Cape Matapan; on the east it is bounded by the ,Egean Sea, the Sea of Mar mom and the Black Sea, and by the Mediterranean in the south. Though pop ularly included within this area, Rumanta is not, strictly speaking, a Balkan state. Excluding that country, the area of the peninsula in square miles is 187,764, divided as follows after the redistribution of territories consequent upon the Balkan Wars of 1912-13: Bulgaria, 43,310 square miles; Serbia, 33,891; Greece, 41,933; Turkey (including the vilet of Constantinople), 10,882; Montenegro, 5,W37 Albania, about 11,000; Bosnia and Herzegovina, 19,768; Croatia and Slavonia, 16,421; Dalmatia, 4,956 square miles. If that portion of Rumania within the parallel of 45° northfis included, an area of about 25,000 square miles would be added. No other district in Europe is so richly provided as the Balkan Peninsula with gulfs and excellent harbors of commercial and naval strategic value. An archipelago of numberless islands, die Cyclades and Sporades of ancient fame, forms a continuous bridge between the Ballcan Peninsula and Asia Minor. The Black Sea is connected with the Sea of Marmora through the Bosphorus, a channel about 20 miles long, and so narrow that Constantinople, at the southwest extremity of the Thracian Bosphorus, is but one mile distant from the Asiatic city of Scutari, eastward across the Bosphorus. The Sea of Marmora is linked with the "Egean by the Dardanelles with an average width of between three and four miles. The Balkan Mountains extend in a varied formation from the Adriatic to the Euxine, breaking up in their advance eastward into sev eral parallel chains with many more or less strong spurs north and south; several ranges extend southward almost to the lEgean: the Perim Dagh and the ancient Rhodope Moun tains of Despoto Dagh. They are frequently broken by defiles or passes of different de grees of serviceableness as routes. The princi pal passes are the Nadir-Derbend, Karnabad, the Basardshik-Sophia, the Trajan, Rosalitha and Shiplca, the latter famed by the heroic struggles between the Russians and Turks in 1877 and and 1878. The principal range of the Balkans is thus divided into several sections, like the Etropol, Khoja and Shipka Balkans, and formed the boundary between -Bulgaria and Rumelia before the two were united. The main elevation of the chain is from 4,000 to 5,000 feet, but it rises much higher in various parts, the loftiest elevation of 9,700 feet above sea level being reached by Mount Scardus in the Char Dagh. The Balkans are rich in minerals, especially rock salt, lead, iron-ore, copper, sil ver, but the treasures of the soil are yet very imperfectly known in spite of the geological re searches, undertaken by German, French and other travelers and scientists. The mountains are mostly of a .granite formation, but the motintain system is very complicated, and its geological and geostratic connections are hard to determine. There are numerous thermal and sulphurous springs, some of which are re nowned and utilized as sanitary watering places. The mountains form the watershed separating the tributaries of the lower Danube and those of the Vardar and Maritza rivers, or, in other words, the watershed between the Black Sea and the X.gean. On account of the broken and irregular character of the peninsula the rivers are short and little navigable. Albania, sepa rated from Montenegro and Novibazar by the north Albanian Alps, is a mass of parallel mountain ranges, irregularly transversed by the winding rivers, Boyana, Drin, Loum, Voiutza and Arta, which flow into the Adriatic and Ionian seas. In Scutari, Monastir and Salonica there are a number of large and deep lakes, pre-eminently those of Scutari, Ochrida, Janina, Prespa and Kastoria. The climate of the penin sula is exceedingly varied; it is rigorous with heavy snowfalls in the north and the central plateau. between Serajevo (Bosnia) and Sofia (Bulgaria) and the tableland of Janina, but becomes mild and sunny toward the south and east, tempered by the breezes of the N.gean. There is hardly any country in the world in habited by such a number of different peoples as the Balkan Peninsula. Surviving there are all the races recorded at the beginning of his tory, with their national languages and distinct racial consciousness. They do not form, how
ever, the whole people, or even the great majority of their particular race in any one district, but are intermingled and live side by side, without ever blending together, so that the process of disentangling their various and conflicting aspirations, tendencies and racial as well as religious distinctions, is well-nigh im possible. The majority are Slays, comprising the Bulgarians in the east and centre, the Serbs and Croats in the west, and, in the ex treme northwest, between Trieste and Laibach, the Slovenes; These compose the southern branch of the Slavonic race. The other inhabit ants of the peninsula are the Albanians in the west, the Greeks in the south, the Turks in the southeast and the Rumanians to the north. In southern Bulgaria (ancient Thrace) and Mace donia, there may be found a Greek, a Bulgarian, a Turkish, an Albanian village, side by side. The Greeks or Byzantines, the Daco-Ruma Mans, who speak a distinctly Romance or neo Latin language, and proudly derive their origin from the legionaries of Emperor Trajanus sta tioned in Dacia, yet undoubtedly from Dacian or Thracian mothers,— and the Albanians of Illyrian stock are the most ancient historic races of the Balkans. The Slays are late comers by migration and conquest. They be came neither Greek nor Roman in speech or customs, political character or national pro clivities, but remained distinctive in language and racial characteristics. Between the Danube and the /Egean Sea the whole of the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula was known as Thracia; the western part as Illyricum and the lower basin of the Vardar River as Mace donia, some centuries before the Christian era. At periods historically well determined, after the Gothic invaders in those regions had been defeated or absorbed or started on their world stirring career, after the Turanian Avars had lost their overwhelming power, the Slavic tribes moved in great numbers into central and southeastern Europe.. About 630 A.D. the Croats began to occupy the present Croatia, Slavonia, northern Bosnia. In 640 the Serbians of the same race and language conquered the Avars and peopled Serbia, South Bosnia, Dalmatia; Montenegro, whose inhabitants are pure Serbs in blood and language, only deriving their name from their national hero, No the Black (Tsernoi), who gave 'the name of Tsernagora (Montenegro) to those desert rocks, a safe retreat to the Serbians, after their defeat at Kossovo in 1389 inflicted by the Turks. The ethnic situation of to-day dates from that epoch. The origin of the Bulgarians is not quite clear. They appear to be of Finnish Ugrian stock, and therefore related to the Turks and the Hungarians, but were Slavic ized early in history. The great apostles of the Slays, Methodius and Cyrillus, themselves Bul garians, even brought Byzantine culture and the. Greek-orthodox religion to the other Slavic races on the peninsula. The battle of Kossovo, already mentioned, made an end to the inde pendence of the highly developed Slavic states, and with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the last bulwark of the crumbling Byzantine empire, the Turkish or, more correctly, Osmanli sway over the entire Balkan Peninsula became a reality. Four centuries of racial strife be tween the Turkish conquerors and the various Greek, Rumanian and Slavic races under their sway resulted in the formation of the Danube states and the Hellenic kingdom, more or less according to races and nationalities, so far as this was possible at all in the case of peoples which are at least as far removed in sympathy and political aspirations from one another as they are from the Turks. The racial antago nisms were always grievously accentuated in the attempted solutions of racial, political and religious problems. While the ancient history of the Balkan Peninsula is bound up with that of the Roman and Byzantine empires, the Middle Ages reveal an unbroken series of in vasions and wars for a period of almost a thousand years up to 1453. Within a century of their appearance in the Balkan Peninsula, the Osmanlis had established the most civilized and best ordered state of their time. But succeeding generations of the Osmanli 'Turks)) lost the virtues of their ancestors, and retained only their capacity. for governing under mili tary law. They never learned to rule as civil ians nor forgot how to rule as soldiers. Dur ing the 28 years of his life after the capture of Constantinople, Mohammed II annexed the whole Balkan Peninsula except the inaccess ible Black Mountain (Montenegro), the Alba nian highlands, and the then Hungarian fort ress of Belgrade. That enlightened monarch showed marked favor to Christians and be stowed the higher offices of state upon them; he encouraged literature, art and commerce. The Venetians held a virtual monopoly of the Euxine (Black Sea) and 2Egean trade, while both in Asia and Europe the social condition of the peasantry was better at the time under Osmanli rule than feudal Christendom. The Ottoman army had the best • reputation in the world; it was the first to introduce efficient commissariat and medical services, and adven turers from all parts of Europe flocked to learn the art of war from the Turks. But the three immediate successors of Mohammed II sowed the seeds of decay and disruption by misrule and oppression, while a revival of the dormant crusading spirit of Europe only served to reawaken the slumbering fanaticism that characterized the early followers of the Prophet.