248 THE ROSS AND PARRY POLAR VOYAGES 



While encamped on Winter Island, the English were visited 

 by a party of Eskimos, whose settlement they visited in turn. There 

 they found a group of five snow-huts, with canoes, sledges, dogs, 

 and above sixty men, women and children, as regularly and to all 

 ^appearance as permanently fixed as if they had occupied the same 

 spot the whole winter. The astonishment with which the English 

 surveyed the exterior aspects of this little village was not dimin- 

 ished by their admission into the interior of the huts composing it. 

 Each was constructed entirely of snow and ice. After creeping 

 through two low passages, having each its arched doorway, the 

 strangers found themselves in a small circular apartment, of which 

 the roof formed a perfect arched dome. From this central apart- 

 ment three doorways, also arched, and of larger dimensions than 

 the outward ones, opened into as many inhabited apartments, one 

 on each side, and the third opposite the entrance. Here the women 

 were seated on their beds, against the wall, each having her little 

 fire-place or lamp, with all her domestic utensils, about her. The 

 children quickly crept behind their mothers ; the dogs slunk into the 

 corners in dismay. 



The construction of the inhabited part of the hut was similar 

 to that of the outer apartment, being a dome, formed by separate 

 blocks of snow laid with great regularity and no small ingenuity, 

 each being cut into the shape requisite to build up a substantial arch, 

 from seven to eight feet high in the center, and with no other sup- 

 port than this principle of building supplies. Sufficient light was 

 admitted by a circular window of ice, neatly fitted into the roof of 

 each apartment. 



In 1824 Parry went north again in connection \vith a series 

 of expeditions sent out by the British government. He was to ex- 

 plore Prince Regent Inlet, and the others were to investigate the 

 northern lands of the continent, with the purpose of obtaining a 

 knowledge of their configuration. One of the latter was under the 

 command of the afterwards famous Sir John Franklin. 



