920 NEWFOUNDLAND.

dances, and Christmas-boxes, are not forgotten; the “ Yule log" is burnt, and the ceremony of lighting it is attended with firing of guns before the door.

Among the labouring classes, as is common among all whose minds are not raised, by education, above superstition, a belief in apparitions prevails, and they delight 1n relatmg ghost stories, or whatever 1s mar- vellous.

The manners of the people of Newfoundland mix and alter from local circumstances, and the inter- course and intermarriages of the inhabitants, who are either English, Scotch, Irish, natives of Guernsey and Jersey, or their descendants.

Celibacy is uncommon among them. There are few families in which there are not from five to twelve children.

The fishermen’s houses are one story high, built of wood growing on the island, and covered with boards and shingles imported from Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, or New Bruns- wick. It was long customary to erect the walls with upright posts stuck 1n the glound; but an improve- ment plevails by building the wooden walls on a stone foundation. Sometimes an additional building is joined, called a “ lean-t0,” which 1s either 1n one loom—a kind of parloul—m is divided into sleep- ing rooms. Thele is usually not more than one large fil e-place, which 1s in the kitchen, and around which, in winter, all the inmates of the house assemble when the labou1s of the day we ove1. I11 the chimneys, they smoke their salmon, or hang up the hams of