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%)
page 47 of 48 (97%)
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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 |
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