Note 1338 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

Often, however, permanent emigration is the result, robbing the mountain population of its most enterprising element, Piedmontese, Bergamese, and Frioulians from the Italian Alps leave their country in large numbers. Many of them find work in Marseilles and other towns of southern France, infusing an Italian strain into the population there and making serious competition for the local French. A proverb says there is no country in the world without sparrows and Bergamese.1338 Geneva, once the citadel of Calvinism, is to-day a Catholic town, owing to the influx of Catholic laborers from Alpine Savoy. The overflow of the redundant population of this mountain province has given the Swiss canton a character diametrically opposed to its traditions.1339 The Chinese provinces of Chili and Manchuria have been largely populated by immigrants from the barren mountain peninsula of Shantung; Manchuria has thereby been converted from an alien into a native district.1340