thousand foot. A long sea-coast, indented with capacious
harbors, covered with a string of islands, and almost in sight of the
Italian shores, disposed both the natives and strangers to the practice
of navigation. The boats or brigantines of the Croats were constructed
after the fashion of the old Liburnians: one hundred and eighty vessels
may excite the idea of a respectable navy; but our seamen will smile at
the allowance of ten, or twenty, or forty, men for each of these ships
of war. They were gradually converted to the more honorable service of
commerce; yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and dangerous;
and it was not before the close of the tenth century that the freedom
and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually vindicated by the Venetian
republic. [12] The ancestors of these Dalmatian kings were equally
removed from the use and abuse of navigation: they dwelt in the White
Croatia, in the inland regions of Silesia and Little Poland, thirty
days' journey, according to the Greek computation, from the sea of
darkness.

[Footnote 2: Hist. vol. iv. p. 11.]

[Footnote 3: Theophanes, p. 296-299. Anastasius, p. 113. Nicephorus,
C. P. p. 22, 23. Theophanes places the old Bulgaria on the banks of the
Atell or Volga; but he deprives himself of all geographical credit by
discharging that river into the Euxine Sea.]

[Footnote 4: Paul. Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 29, p. 881,
882. The apparent difference between the Lombard historian and the
above-mentioned Greeks, is easily reconciled by Camillo Pellegrino (de
Ducatu Beneventano, dissert. vii. in the Scriptores Rerum Ital. (tom. v.
p. 186, 187) and Beretti, (Chorograph. Italiae Medii Aevi, p. 273, &c.
This Bulgarian colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and
learned the Latin, without forgetting their native language.]

[Footnote 5: These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire are assigned
to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction
between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople, (Baronius, Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 869, No. 75.)]

[Footnote 6: The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida, are
clearly expressed in Cedrenus, (p. 713.) The removal of an archbishop or
patriarch from Justinianea prima to Lychnidus, and at length to Ternovo,
has produced some perplexity in the ideas or language of the Greeks,
(Nicephorus Gregoras, l. ii. c. 2, p. 14, 15. Thomassin, Discipline de
l'Eglise, tom. i. l. i. c. 19