Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Lecture on the Aborigines of Newfoundland - Delivered Before the Mechanics' Institute, at St. John's, - Newfoundland, on Monday, 17th January, 1859 by Joseph Noad
page 47 of 48 (97%)

Their marriage ceremony consisted merely in a prolonged feast, and
which rarely terminated before the end of twenty-four hours. Polygamy
would seem not to have been countenanced by the tribe.

Of their remedies for disease, the following were those the most
frequently resorted to:--

For pains in the stomach, a decoction of the rind of the dogberry was
drank.

For sickness among old people--sickness in the stomach, pains in the
back, and for rheumatism, the vapor-bath was used.

For sore head, neck, &c., pounded sulphuret of iron mixed up with oil
was rubbed over the part affected, and was said generally to effect a
cure in two or three days.


Brief as the foregoing statement is, yet, so scanty are the materials
which relate to the subject, that it contains substantially all the
facts which can now be gathered together of that interesting people,
the original inhabitants of Newfoundland--a people whose origin and
fate are alike shrouded in mystery, and of whom, in their passage
across the stage of life, but little is certainly known, beyond the
cruel outrages, the bitter wrongs they endured at the hands of the
white man--before whose power, so mercilessly used, the tribe sank,
and was either utterly annihilated, or, as is more probable, a
remnant--worn out, harrassed beyond human endurance--left the homes of
their fathers, and in another land sought that security for their
DigitalOcean Referral Badge