re. To avoid destruction
the Daco-Roman population withdrew more and more into the inaccessible
wooded regions of the mountains, and as a result were in no wise
influenced by contact with the invaders.

But with the coming of the Slavs, who settled in the Balkan peninsula
about the beginning of the seventh century, certain fundamental changes
took place in the ethnical conditions prevailing on the Danube. The
Rumanians were separated from the Romans, following the occupation by the
Slavs of the Roman provinces between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. Such
part of the population as was not annihilated during the raids of the
Avars was taken into captivity, or compelled to retire southwards towards
modern Macedonia and northwards towards the Dacian regions.

Parts of the Rumanian country became dependent upon the new state founded
between the Balkans and the Danube in 679 by the Bulgarians, a people of
Turanian origin, who formerly inhabited the regions north of the Black Sea
between the Volga and the mouth of the Danube.

After the conversion of the Bulgarians to Christianity (864) the Slovenian
language was introduced into their Church, and afterwards also into the
Church of the already politically dependent Rumanian provinces.[1] This
finally severed the Daco-Rumanians from the Latin world. The former
remained for a long time under Slav influence, the extent of which is
shown by the large number of words of Slav origin contained in the
Rumanian language, especially in geographical and agricultural
terminology.

[Footnote 1: The Rumanians north and south of the Danube embraced the
Christian faith after its introduction into the Roman Empire by
Constantine the Great (325), with Latin as religious language and their
church organization under the rule of Rome. A Christian basilica, dating
from that period, has been discovered by the Rumanian; archaeologist,
Tocilescu, at Adam Klissi (Dobrogea).]

The coming of the Hungarians (a people of Mongolian race) about the end of
the ninth century put an end to the Bulgarian domination in Dacia. While a
few of the existing Rumanian duchies were subdued by Stephen the Saint,
the first King of Hungary (995-1038), the 'land of the Vlakhs' (_Terra
Blacorum_), in the south-eastern part of Transylvania, enjoyed under the
Hungarian kings a certain degree of national autonomy. The Hungarian
chronicles speak of the Vlakhs as 'former colonists of the Romans'. The
ethnological influence of