In spite of the diverse elements which compose it, the Greek nationality is one of the most homogeneous in Europe. The Albanians, of Pelasgian descent like the Greeks, do not cede to the latter in patriotism; and it was they—the Suliotes, Hydriotes, Spezziotes—who fought most valiantly for national independence. The eight hundred families of Rumanian or Kutzo-Wallachian Zinzares who pasture their herds in the hills of Acarnania and Ætolia, and are known as Kara-Gunis, or “black cloaks,” speak the two languages, and sometimes marry Greek girls, though they never give their own daughters in marriage to the Greeks. Haughty and free, they are not sufficiently numerous to be of any great importance. To foreigners the Greeks are rather intolerant, and they take no pains to render their stay amongst them agreeable. The Turks—who were numerous formerly in certain parts of the Peloponnesus, in Bœotia, and in the {45} island of Eubœa, and whose presence recalled an unhappy period of servitude—have fled to a man, and only the fez, the narghile, and the slippers remind us of their former presence. The Jews, though met with in every town of the East, whether Slav or Mussulman, dare hardly enter the presence of the Greeks, who are, moreover, their most redoubtable rivals in matters of finance: they are to be found only in the Ionian Islands, where they managed to get a footing during the British Protectorate. In this same Archipelago we likewise meet with the descendants of the ancient Venetian colonists, and with emigrants from all parts of Italy. French and Italian families still form a distinct element of the population of Naxos, Santorin, and Syra. As to the Maltese porters and gardeners at Athens and Corfu, they continue for the most part in subordinate positions, and never associate with the Greeks.

The homogeneous character of the population of Greece does not admit of that country being divided into ethnological provinces, like Turkey or Austro-Hungary, but it consists geographically of four distinct portions. These are (1), continental Hellas, known since the Turkish invasion as Rumelia, in remembrance of the “Roman” empire of Byzantium; (2), the ancient Peloponnesus, now called the Morea, perhaps a transposition of the word “Romea,” or from a Slav word signifying “sea coast,” and applied formerly to Elis; (3), the islands of the Ægean Sea; (4), the Ionian Islands. In describing the various portions of Greece we shall make use, in preference, of the ancient names of mountains, rivers, and towns; for the Hellenes of our own day, proud of the glories of the past, are endeavouring gradually to get rid of names of Slav or Italian origin, which still figure upon the maps of their country.13