DY OF A FRONTIER

Kiepert, the famous geographer, was able, as the result of his
diligent researches and explorations, to correct many errors in former
ethnological maps; but in the map of the Balkan Peninsula, which he
published in 1870, the country between Kustendil, Trn and Vranja is
represented by a white space. And if the people who dwell in these
wild, narrow valleys had been overlooked as thoroughly by subsequent
Congresses and Frontier Commissions they would have been most
grateful. They only asked--this well-built, stubborn race--that one
should leave them to their own devices in their homes among the
mountains where the lilac grows. They asked that one should leave them
with their ancient superstitions, such as that of St. Petka, who
inhabited a cavern high above the present road from Trn, while St.
Therapon, so they say, lived by himself upon a neighbouring rock.
Inside the cavern now the water drips continuously and is collected in
large bowls; these are St. Petka's tears, which are particularly
beneficial, say the natives, for afflicted eyes. But though this
region is so poor that, towards the end of the Turkish regime and
during the war of Bulgarian liberation and also in the winter of
1879-80, the people were compelled, through lack of flour, to use a
sort of "white earth," _bela zemja_, yet this land was coveted, and
now the maps no longer show an empty space but a variety of names and
a frontier line. From the nomenclature we perceive that the region was
visited of old by people who were not Slavs--such were those who gave
to a mountain the name of Ruj, to a village the name of Erul, and to a
river the name of Jerma, which has been explained as being derived
from the Lydian Hermos, the river of St. Therapon's birthplace. The
names of Latin colouring may either be memorials of the Romanized
Thracians or else may refer to the mediaeval Catholics, whether Saxon
miners or travelling merchants. But there does not seem in the veins
of the present population to be much trace of these other settlers or
wayfarers; at any rate, the Slavs do not differ appreciably among
themselves, and the drawing of a frontier line has been a peculiar
hardship.

One of the greatest misfortunes of the nineteenth century was the
creation of separate Serbian and Bulgarian kingdoms, wherein there was
so small an ethnological difference between these two branches of the
Yugoslavs; and in those districts where a frontier runs one see