Three mows seem to have contributed to induce the Vlachi to settle north of the Danube—the oppression of the Greek emperors and nobles, the invasions of the Turks, and the opportunity of acquiring fertile lands and liberty in a country beyond the reach of the emperors and the Turks. Thus the inhabitants of 'Wallachia, Moldavia, and a great part of Transylvania and Hungary must be considered as descended from the Vlachi in Thrace, a Christian nation, belonging to the Greek Church, and who in the 12th century used a tied of Roman language, which the Kutzo-AVallaellians (or that part of the race which remained in the more southern provinces of Turkey in-Europe) still do. The name 'Thai,' or loch,' is said to be Slavonic for 'Italian,' or ' Roman and thus Wallach is equivalent to the native ozone Romani. In StriVer's Memorise Populormu,' vol. i., Thrace is spoken of its, "Provincia Lettinorum qui illo tempore Romani vocabantur, modo vero Morovlachi, hoc est Nigel Latini voeantur." Slavonic tethers spread all over the European provinces of the empire south of the Danube, even to the remotest parts of the Peloponnesus in the 7th century, and no doubt mingled with the races already in possession of the soil. That the Wallacha are principally
descended from Romans or a Romaoised people is clear from their anguage, customs, costume, and name. The language shows a con siderable admixture of Greek and Slavonic, with some Turkish and Albanian roots; but the auxiliary verbs, the pronouns, the greater part of the prepositions, and the adverbs of place and time, as well as the numerals, the declensions, and the conjugations, are all Latin, and so is generally the groundwork of the language.
The Wallachinns use the Cyrillinn alphabet, which consists of forty two letters, and was invented by Bishop Cyrillus about 870, when he first wrote In the old Slavonic language in Servia. They have always had a written language, and the number of their chronicles, annals, nod ecclesiastical works is considerable, but only a few of them are printed. Newspapers are published in the Wallachian language at Bukharest and Yassy.