This is due partly to the Christian communities, notably the Maronites and others in Syria, the Anatolian and Rumelian Greeks, and the Armenians of the eastern province and of Constantinople.
To this council, with these extended powers, was handed over the absolute administration, collection and control of the " six indirect contributions " above enumerated, for the benefit of the bondholders, and in addition, it was to encash for the same purpose bills on the customs, to be drawn half-yearly in its favour by the minister of finance, amounting annually to £T180,000, representing the tax on Tumbeki (£TSo,000) and the surplus revenue of Cyprus (£T130,000); and the Eastern Rumelian annuity, originally fixed at £T245,000, but gradually reduced by force of circumstances, until after frequent suspensions of payment it reached in 1897 the level of £T114,000, and has, since the declaration of Bulgarian independence, been definitely stopped.
The public debt council consented with good grace, although the minister of finance, by omitting to consult that council during the progress of negotiations, lost sight of the fact that a sum of £T87,823 was due to the public debt administration on account of arrears of the Eastern Rumelian annuity up to December 1887, and that a further sum of £T430,741 was due by the Bulgarian to the Turkish government itself in compensation Tor the Rustchuk-Varna railway under the Treaty of Berlin.
Abulfeda the geographer, writing in the r3th century, notices the fact that part of the Apamaean Lake was inhabited by Christian fishermen who lived on the lake in wooden huts built on piles, and Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) mentions that the Rumelian fishermen on Lake Prasias "still inhabit wooden cottages built over the water, as in the time of Herodotus."
After the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 he went to Philippopolis as Austro-Hungarian envoy extraordinary on the International Eastern Rumelian Commission.