Derived from the old Turkish times

The peasants herd together in the villages, and the villages are for the most part situated in the hollows, partly from the desire to find shelter from the winds in winter and shade from the sun in summer, partly from the hereditary instinct, derived from the old Turkish times, which leads the Bulgarian peasant to keep his home as much out of sight as possible. I have no doubt, therefore, that the population of this northern plateau of the Balkans, which forms one of the richest agricultural districts of the Principality, must be far larger than one would guess from the glimpses one gets of it out of the windows of a railway carriage. I hear on every side that the increasing exodus of the Mussulman population from this part of Bulgaria is a matter of serious anxiety. The Tomaks make no complaint as to their treatment by the Government.

Christian neighbors

As against the Administration they have no grievances; they are offered exemption from military service on easy terms; but, notwithstanding all this, they object to dwelling in a country where the faith of Islam is not dominant In many instances they are selling off their lands to their Christian neighbors; and if the present emigration goes on, the mosques one sees in every village hereabouts will in a few years* time be left without worshippers. As yet, however, the Mahommedan element remains supreme in the districts of Bulgaria which lie between Rustschuk and Varna.

At the roadside stations, porters, passengers, and loafers, with scarcely an exception, wore the turban, and had the look, as well as the garb, of a race distinct from that of the Bulgarians south of the Balkan Mountains. I was assured at Sofia that the Tomaks were Bulgarians by birth and descent and nationality, whose sole difference from their Christian fellow-countrymen lay in the accident that their forefathers had embraced Mahommedanism during the Turkish era. This may be so, but I find it very hard to believe that it is.