SPITSBERGEN. — RUSSIAN HUNTERS. 141 



ants in Russia, which being taken out with them 

 in pieces, are constructed with little trouble in the 

 most convenient situations. They build their stoves 

 with bricks, or with clay found in the country. 

 Their largest hut, which is erected near the place 

 where their vessels or boats are laid up, is from 

 twenty to twenty-five feet square, and is used as a 

 station and magazine ; but the huts used by the 

 men who go in quest of skins, and which are erect- 

 ed along shore, at the distance of ten to fifty versts 

 from each other, are only seven or eight feet square. 

 The smaller huts are usually occupied by two or 

 three men, who take care to provide themselves, 

 from the store, with the necessary provisions for 

 serving them the whole winter *. 



I have visited several of these huts, some con- 

 structed of logs, others of deals two inches in thick- 

 ness. The one constituting the most comfortable 

 lodging I have seen, I met with on the north-west 

 point of the Foreland, in the year 1809- It was 

 built of logs of half round timber, (the original trees 

 being slit up the middle) ; the round sides were put 

 outward, and the ends of the timbers forming two 

 adjoining sides stretched beyond the corner, and be- 

 ing notched half way into each other, formed a close 

 joint. The logs were placed horizontally, and were 

 built into a rectangular form, about foiu'teen feet 



* Col. Beanfoy's Queries^ No. 10- 



