Next to the Albanians come the Jews. These differ very much from the Jews known to us in our American cities. They are the direct descendants of the Jews who were driven out of Spain by Torquemada during the Spanish Inquisition, and found refuge under the protection of the sultan. They still speak a curious old obsolete Spanish that can be understood by a Mexican or a Spaniard quite easily. The special privileges and the life of comparative ease which they enjoyed under Ottoman rule seems to have weakened them, for among them are not found the men of marked ability in the fields of art, science, and philosophy that may be found among the German or the Russian Jews. In Bulgaria, where the Government has given them equal rights with its Christian citizens, they number about 40,000, nearly all of them being engaged in small commercial pursuits. Farther south they increase in number. In Saloniki, now a Greek city, they form a huge majority of the total population--about 100,000 out of a mixed population of 175,000. The Wallachs or Vlachs are another considerable portion of the Balkan population, especially in the mountain regions. They are generally considered as Rumanians, and have enjoyed the special protection of the Rumanian diplomatic agents in Turkey, but they differ somewhat from the Rumanians in Rumania proper. A gentle, peaceful people, most of them are engaged in pastoral pursuits, tending their flocks up in the mountains in the summer and coming down into the lowlands in the winter. In some places they have settled down to a civic life, as in Bersa, a town not far out of Saloniki along the Monastir railroad, where the majority of the population is Wallachian. It is said that their dialect is the nearest approach to a survival of the ancient Latin of any spoken tongue, from which it is deduced that they are the descendants of the Roman colonists that were sent by Rome into this country when it was under her rule. Another scattered element are the Gypsies; they are especially numerous in Bulgaria and Serbia. These people are the lowest in their standard of living and culture of all the Balkan races. All of them speak Turkish, but their natural tongue differs from any other Balkan dialect. Among themselves they are known as "Copts," which would rather indicate a comparatively recent Egyptian origin. However, as they are absolutely of no significance, either politically or in any other sense, they need not be considered further.