This influence of the Hellenes is all the more powerful as it meets with support amongst the Zinzares, known also as Macedo-Walakhs, “Limping” Walakhs, or Southern Rumanians, who are met with throughout the country. These Zinzares are the kinsmen of the Rumanians of Wallachia and Moldavia, and live in a compact body only on the two slopes of the Pindus, to the south and east of the Lake of Yanina. Like the Rumanians of the Danube, they are most probably Latinised Dacians. They resemble the Walakhs in features, character, and disposition, and speak a neo-Latin tongue much mixed with Greek. The Zinzares in the valleys of the Pindus are, for the most part, herdsmen, and wander away from their villages sometimes for months. Others carry on trades, exhibiting much manual skill and intelligence. Nearly all the bricklayers of Turkey, those of the large towns excepted, are Zinzares; and the same individual sometimes erects an entire house, doing in turn the work of architect, carpenter, joiner, {120} and locksmith. The Rumanians of the Pindus are likewise esteemed as clever goldsmiths. Their capacity for business is great, and the commerce of the interior of Turkey is almost entirely in their hands, as is that of the maritime districts in those of the Greeks. The Walakhs of Metzovo are said to have stood formerly under the direct protection of the Porte, and every traveller, whether Mussulman or Christian, was bound to unshoe his horses before he left their territory, for fear “of his carrying away a clod of earth which did not belong to him.” Commercial houses conducted by Walakhs of the Pindus are met with in every town of the Orient, and even at Vienna one of the most influential banks has been founded by one of them. Abroad they are generally taken for Greeks, and the wealthier amongst them send their children to Athens to be educated. Surrounded by Mussulmans, the Zinzares of the Pindus feel the necessity of attaching themselves to some country through which they might obtain their freedom, and they hope for a union with Greece. It is only quite recently that they have learnt to look upon the Rumanians of the North and the Italians as their kinsmen. They do not, however, set much store upon their nationality, and have no aspirations as a distinct race. There can be no doubt that in the course of ages many of these Macedo-Walakhs have become Hellenized. Nearly all Thessaly was inhabited by Zinzares in the Middle Ages, and Byzantine authors speak of that country as “Great Wallachia.” Whether these Zinzares have emigrated to Rumania, as some think, or have become assimilated with the Greeks, the fact remains that at the present day they are not very numerous on the eastern slopes of the Pindus. Thousands of Rumanian families have settled in the coast towns, at Avlona, Berat, and Tirana, embracing Mohammedanism, but still retaining their native idiom.