Ethnically Macedonians and Bulgarians consist of mixed European and Asiatic elements. The oldest layer in the population is Thracian. This local stock peopled the land at the time of the Roman conquest and was strongly Romanized during the subsequent centuries. Slavs overran the country in the sixth century. The Bulgarians made their appearance in the seventh. Turks, or rather Mongol and Tatar hordes, began their invasions in the eighth. These Asiatics were nomads. They made excellent soldiers but poor settlers. Their settlements, which were made at strategic points, can be recognized today by their commanding sites. It is hard to determine how much of the Slav or of the Tatar exists in the average Bulgarian of our day. The history of the land during the second half of the first Christian millennium is a record of constant invasions from the east. The invaders appear at first to have been Slavs from the southern steppes of western Russia. As time goes on, however, Bulgaria is seen to absorb wanderers proceeding from more and more distant districts in the southern belts of the steppeland which forms the continuation of Europe into Asia. Slavic culture and speech preserved by the Bulgarians seem but the veil that hides their strong Asiatic affinity. The fundamental difference between the temper of the Serbian and the Bulgarian is apparent to travelers in Balkan lands. The former are true Slavs. They are lighthearted and always ready to make merry. Their mountains re-echo with folk songs of the genuine Slavic type. The Bulgarian on the other hand is inclined to silence. Both peoples are equally industrious, but in the Serbian the mobile and restless spirit of the west is discernible, while the Bulgarian is as slow and ponderous a thinker as ever was bred on the vast and open stretches of Eurasia’s central lowlands.