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The Industrial Arts of the Esquimaux, By RiCiiARD KiNG, 

 M.D.* Communicated by the Ethnological Society. 



Of the industrial arts of the Esquimaux, their habitations, 

 in construction and variety of material, display, perhaps, the 

 greatest ingenuity. Their hunting grounds extend about 

 sixty miles inland, but their dwellings are almost invariably 

 raised near the sea-shore, and are either permanent or tem- 

 porary, the character of them depending upon the locality, 

 and the material at the workman's disposal. But even those 

 who have fixed dwellings leave them in the summer for tents 

 suited to their migratory habits. In Greenland, the permanent 

 house is built with stones, and turf as a substitute for mortar. 

 It is a low hut, not more than two or three yards high, with a 

 flat roof of wood and turf. It has neither door nor chimney, 

 the use of both being supplied by a vaulted passage, made of 

 stone and earth, sixteen or eighteen feet long, communica- 

 ting with the middle of the house. The floor is divided into 

 apartments, resembling horse-stalls, by skins reaching from 

 the posts that support the roof to the wall. Each family 

 has its separate room, and each room, in front, a window 

 of seal-skin parchment, which is white and transparent, and 

 the ceiling and walls are lined with the same material. In 

 the room beneath the window, attached to the whole length 

 of the wall, is a deal bench, raised half a yard from the 

 ground, and reserved, as we do best rooms, for visitors. A 

 similar bench is attached to the back wall of the room for 

 the use of the family, the bedding consisting of rein-deer 

 skins. These benches are also used as sofas by day, the 

 women sitting in the rear cross-legged like tailors, and the 

 men in front in the sitting position of civilized life. 



In Gilbert Sound, instead of the walls being formed of 

 stone, John Davis informs us they are made of wood j while at 

 Regent Bay, according to Sir John Ross, stone-built houses 

 are used, and the roof, instead of being flat, is arched, and the 



* Read before the Ethnological Society of London. 



