The colony consisted of two very rude straw-thatched sheds, which seemed all thatch and no wall, insomuch that on approaching them I at first mistook them for two long, irregular haystacks. One of the hovels was for dwelling-house and the other as a shelter for vegetable stores, filled with gherkins and onions, and overgrown by a vine-leaved pumpkin. The dwelling-house had a kind of porch or atrium; that is to say, the thatched eaves, supported by two poles, projected almost as far in front of the door as the one room extended behind it. Under this canopy were seated two Bulgars, hard at work tying up bundles of onions, clad in their dark national costume—the brown tight-sleeved jacket embroidered with black, the dull red sash, the brown trouser-leggings which are equally Turkish and Tartar, and on their head the black sheepskin cap which had at first attracted my attention; while on a peg behind hung one of their heavy mantles of the same black, shaggy sheepskin. [Illustration: Bulgarian Settlement.] It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast to the Croatian costume than was presented here. The dress of the Croats is light and airy, as if they had strayed from a land of perpetual sunshine. The Bulgars are armoured against the elements—you would fancy they were fresh from some hyperborean land of frost and storms—not yet acclimatised to the sunny South. The flowing tunics of the Croats invite the slightest breeze; the brilliant red and white hues seem to tell of a land where the roses bloom all the year round. But the heavy mantles of the Bulgars, the woollen coats, the close sleeves and leggings, are made as if to exclude the wind and frost; the cold dark colours shadow forth a sky to match. Yet the climate of the modern Bulgaria, in its widest sense, does not differ in any considerable degree from that of the Croats, except that parts of the Bulgarian area are hotter. Both are lands of vines and fig trees. Yet the language is almost the same. The modern Bulgar can talk with the Croat without an interpreter. Whence, then, this startling divergence of attire? The reason is to be sought far away in the dim twilight of history. Originally the Bulgars were not a Sclavonic people. Their kinship lies with mysterious Huns and Tartars. The fatherland whence they wandered forth lies on the shores of the Caspian and the mounts of Turkestan or more northern Altai. Since their arrival in Europe they have been lost, as it were, in a great Sclavonic sea. They have been Sclavonized by the multitude of their subjects, just as the Mantchu Tartars have within the last two centuries been Celestialized by the Chinese they subdued. But it is the northern nomads who have formed the backbone to this large unwieldy body. It was the Ugrian dynasty that erected in the tenth century the Bulgarian Czardom, as civilized as any state in contemporary Europe; that humbled Byzantine Cæsars in the dust