The
officials treated them as if they were very little better than cattle.
These people, with their shoeless feet encased in thongs of leather,
with garments unconscious of the tailor's art, and in some instances
regardless of the primary object of clothes as a human institution, were
the most uncivilised of any I had yet seen in Hungary.
These Rusniacks, or "Little Russians," as they are called, are tolerably
numerous--not less than 470,000, according to statistical returns. They
are to be found almost exclusively in the north-east of Hungary. They
were fugitives in the old days from Russia, to whom they are intensely
antagonistic, having probably suffered from her persecutions. In
religion they are dissenters from the orthodox Greek Church,
assimilating more with Roman Catholicism. These people are another
variety in the strange mixture of races to be found in Hungary. It is
thought, and it would seem probable, that the very fact of the military
conscription will help to civilise these Rusniacks by drawing them out
of their savage isolation in the wild valleys of the Marmaros Mountains.
There are many peculiarities respecting the races inhabiting the
northern parts of Hungary. It would be a great mistake to put the Slavs
of the north in the same category with the Slavs of the south: the
former are on far better terms with the Magyars; they are for the most
part contented, hard-working people, not troubling themselves at all
about Panslavism.
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