winter wherever was convenient for them. We know most about the Old Servian State, where the Vlakhs constituted an important element and a rich source of income for the sovereign and the other landlords. By them the larger mountain pastures were made the most of and indeed devastated and disforested by the reckless grazing-off of the new growth, by the searing of the grass to freshen the pasturage, and by the peeling of young beech-trees as a substitute for honey to sweeten milk foods.[1] They provided the State with excellent horses, of small stature but hardy, and good cavalry for the army. They managed also the commerce, for it had to be a caravan trade with pack-horses, because most of the mountains ranges run parallel with the sea and were then impassable for wagons. The Vlakhs themselves traded in wool, skins, and the famous Vlakhish cheese which had to have a definite weight for Ragusa, and even served as a substitute for money. In return they chiefly brought sea-salt. By this trading the Vlakhs acquired knowledge of the world, and became far superior in experience and shrewdness to the boorish Slav peasant. They grazed the mountain pastures (planina) to the height of 5000 ft., from the end of April to the middle of September, and then slowly made their way, often taking two months, to winter on the coasts on account of the mild snowless climate and the salt which splendidly nourishes the sheep. They lived chiefly on milk and cheese. Their chief enemy was the ice when it locked up the grass in early spring. Thousands of sheep then starved and the richest man might become a beggar in a few days. As they had no fixed settlements, they could not easily be enslaved by the landlords, and after payment of the grazing-tax they enjoyed freedom of movement without restraint. They themselves were a heavy burden for the peasantry, especially through their destruction of the cornfields. Thus peasants and herdsmen were in opposition, there was no intermarriage between them, and the State had to regulate the wandering people and to protect the peasants with draconic laws. The Emperor Dushan's law-book of 1349 states: "Where a Vlakh or an Albanian camps in a village district, there another who comes after him shall not camp; if he camps there by force, he shall pay the fighting-fine (100 hyperpyres, that is fifty gold ducats) besides the value of what he has grazed off." Even the Ragusans in Dalmatia, although they were entirely dependent for their trade with the interior on the Vlakh caravans, complained bitterly of the mischief they did when they wintered in Ragusan territories, and finally forbade them to winter there.
All the more must the Avar nomads have oppressed the subjugated Slav peasantry, for here the Avar was master, and the peasant was without rights and protection. The Avar tribes as wandering herdsmen amongst
- ↑ Roumanian herdsman life described by Ponqueville, Voyage, II. pp. 208 ff., 2nd ed. pp. 382 ff. Jireček, Das Fürstentum Bulgarien, pp. 181 ff. — The almost universal bareness of the soil on the chalk mountains is much more due to the wandering herdsmen than to the Venetian demand for timber for shipbuilding.
