220 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 in relating ghost stories, or whatever is 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 , 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 , , Nova Scotia , or Bruns¬ wick. It was long customary to erect the walls with upright posts stuck in the ground ; but an improve¬ ment prevails by building the wooden "walls on a stone foundation. Sometimes an additional building is joined, called a " lean-to," which is either in one room—a kind of parlour—or is divided into sleep¬ ing rooms. There is usually not more than one large fire-place, which is in the kitchen, and around which, in winter, all the inmates of the house assemble when the labours of the day are over. In the chimneys, they smoke their salmon, or hang up the hams of