By their non-discriminating Anglo-Saxon
fellow-citizens they are called Galicians, or by the unlearned,
with an echo of Paul's Epistle in their minds, "Galatians." There
they pack together in their little shacks of boards and tar-paper,
with pent roofs of old tobacco tins or of slabs or of that same
useful but unsightly tar-paper, crowding each other in close
irregular groups as if the whole wide prairie were not there
inviting them. From the number of their huts they seem a colony of
no great size, but the census taker, counting ten or twenty to a hut,
is surprised to find them run up into hundreds. During the summer
months they are found far away in the colonies of their kinsfolk,
here and there planted upon the prairie, or out in gangs where new
lines of railway are in construction, the joy of the contractor's
heart, glad to exchange their steady, uncomplaining toil for the
uncertain, spasmodic labour of their English-speaking rivals. But
winter finds them once more crowding back into the little black
shacks in the foreign quarter of the city, drawn thither by their
traditionary social instincts, or driven by economic necessities.
All they ask is bed space on the floor or, for a higher price, on
the home-made bunks that line the walls, and a woman to cook the
food they bring to her; or, failing such a happy arrangement, a
stove on which they may boil their varied stews of beans or barley,
beets or rice or cabbage, with such scraps of pork or beef from the
neck or flank as they can beg or buy at low price from the slaughter
houses, but ever with the inevitable seasoning of garlic, lacking
which no Galician dish is palatable.
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