It is a land of unusual scenic beauty, having picturesque mountains, wooded hills, beautiful valleys, grain-producing plains, and a seacoast that has both rocky cliffs and long sandy beaches. Soil and climate are adequate to permit production of a variety of crops. Although only a few mineral resources are present in quantity or in good quality ores, the country has a number of them. Large quantities of brown coal and lignite are available, but resources of the better fuels are limited. The people of the country have been influenced by its location, which is close to the point of contact between Europe and the Orient. The area had been overrun by so many conquerors and occupied for so long that only since liberation in 1878 have a majority of the peasants dared come out of the hills to farm the better land of the plains and valleys. The country fared poorly in the distribution of the spoils after the First Balkan War in 1912. It was then on the losing side of the Second Balkan War in 1913 and of the two great wars since. In spite of this, its boundaries contain most of the Bulgarian people in the area, and only some 10 to 15 percent of the population within its borders is not ethnically Bulgarian. It has until recently been predominantly agricultural. Industrialization was undertaken late, and it was not until 1969 that the urban population equaled that of the rural areas (see ch. 2). NATURAL FEATURES Topography Alternating bands of high and low terrain extend generally east to west across the country. The four most prominent of these from north to south are the Danubian plateau, the Stara Planina (Old Mountain), or Balkan Mountains, the central Thracian Plain, and the Rodopi (or Rhodope Mountains). The western part of the country, however, consists almost entirely of higher land, and the individual mountain ranges in the east tend to taper into hills and gentle uplands as they approach the Black Sea (see fig. 2). The Danubian plateau, also called a plain or a tableland, extends from the Yugoslav border to the Black Sea. It encompasses the area between the Danube River, which forms most of the country's northern border, and the Stara Planina to the south. The plateau rises from cliffs along the river, which are typically 300 to 600 feet high, and abuts against the mountains at elevations on the order of 1,200 to 1,500 feet. The region slopes gently but perceptibly from the river southward to the mountains. The western portion is lower and more dissected; in the east it becomes regular but somewhat higher, better resembling a plateau. Bulgarians name local areas within it, but they do not name the region as a whole. It is a fertile area with undulating hills and is the granary of the country.