Trade by the river died, but meantime the
railway from the south kept pouring in a steady stream of immigration,
which distributed itself according to its character and in obedience
to the laws of affinity, the French Canadian finding a congenial home
across the Red River in old St. Boniface, while his English-speaking
fellow-citizen, careless of the limits of nationality, ranged whither
his fancy called him. With these, at first in small and then in larger
groups, from Central and South Eastern Europe, came people strange in
costume and in speech; and holding close by one another as if in terror
of the perils and the loneliness of the unknown land, they segregated
into colonies tight knit by ties of blood and common tongue.
Already, close to the railway tracks and in the more unfashionable
northern section of the little city, a huddling cluster of little
black shacks gave such a colony shelter. With a sprinkling of
Germans, Italians and Swiss, it was almost solidly Slav. Slavs of
all varieties from all provinces and speaking all dialects were
there to be found: Slavs from Little Russia and from Great Russia,
the alert Polak, the heavy Croatian, the haughty Magyar, and
occasionally the stalwart Dalmatian from the Adriatic, in speech
mostly Ruthenian, in religion orthodox Greek Catholic or Uniat
and Roman Catholic.
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