"This, my first acquaintance with the Bulgarians, has given me a very favorable opinion of them. Others have expressed a different opinion, but I should rank them before the Armenians in native intelligence and cultivation. Certainly a higher degree of civilization prevails among them, than among the Armenians of Asia Minor. They have better homes, better vehicles, better implements of husbandry. Wherever we went, we found much to remind us that we were in Europe, and not in Asia. Our road from Varna to Rustchuk was bordered by the posts and wires of the telegraph. Every town had its telegraphic station and corps of operators--French, English, and Polish gentlemen. More than once, through their unsolicited kindness, our approach to a stopping place was announced by the wire, and we found lodgings made ready against our coming. This, to me, was quite a strange feature of missionary travelling, very unlike my experience in Asia Minor." The Rev. Charles F. Morse, who joined the Armenian mission in 1857, was appointed to commence the mission. Leaving his family at Constantinople until he had completed his arrangements, he proceeded to Adrianople in March, 1858, with Hagopos, a graduate of the Bebek Seminary, as an assistant. The population of Adrianople was then estimated at one hundred and forty thousand, of whom forty thousand were supposed to be Turks. The books in the Turkish language found in Mr. Morse's baggage, including a large number of New Testaments, were at first detained at the custom-house, under instructions from the Porte, but were released upon application of the American and English Consuls. His bookseller obtained a firman for the sale of books, and freely exposed the Turkish Testament, and Mr. Morse was himself allowed free access to the largest and finest of the mosques,--a favor not granted at the capital. The most formidable opposition apprehended was from the Romish missionaries. They had been quick to see a double advantage in the disaffection of the Bulgarians with the Greek Church, and the fall of the Russian Protectorate, and had already erected a fine church. The French residents, their consul, and even the English consular agent, were Catholics. An intelligent Bulgarian expressed the opinion that Protestant missions furnished the only possible safeguard against Rome in that country, and one of the best informed of the American missionaries declared his belief, that the greatest contest of Protestantism with Rome, since the era of the Reformation, would be in Turkey.