THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 77 



good deal above 80° F. and frequently rose to 90° F.* From the point 

 of view of those who spent most of the winter indoors in that house, it 

 was a matter of no consequence that the temperature was perhaps forty 

 or fifty degrees below zero outdoors, when the outdoor air seldom came in 

 contact with their bodies. And even when these people went out, the 

 cold air did not have a chance to come in contact with them except 

 for the limited area of the face. When an Eskimo is well dressed, his 

 two layers of fur clothing- imprison the body heat so effectively that 

 the air in actual contact with his skin is always at the temperature of a 

 tropical si;mmer. It is true, therefore, that while an Eskimo is indoors 

 his entire body is exposed to a local climate as warm as that of Sicily, 

 and when he is outdoors he carries that climate about with him inside 

 of his clothes and applicable to ninety or ninety-five per cent, of his 

 body area. 



If it be supposed that early maturity in such a country as Sicily is 

 due to the direct effect of heat upon the body, in some such way as 

 when heat brings early maturity to flies cultivated under experimental 

 conditions, then we see that on that theory the Eskimo has every reason 

 to mature about as early as the Sicilian. The same conclusion follows 

 if we consider that early maturity is due to the acceleration of the proc- 

 esses of metabolism due to the strain upon the body in adjusting itself 

 t:> excessive heat. When an Eskimo comes into such a house as the one 

 in which I lived in 1906-1907, he strips off all clothing immediately upon 

 entering, except his knee breeches, and sits naked from the waist up and 

 from the knees down. Cooking is continually going on during the day 

 and the house is so hot that great streams of perspiration run down 

 the face and body of every inhabitant and are being continually mopped 

 up with handfuls of moss or of excelsior, or, according to later custom, 

 with bath towels; and there is drinking of cup after cup of ice water. 

 At night the temperature of the house will be only ten or fifteen degrees 

 lower; or if it drops more, people will cover up with fur robes instead 

 of sleeping nearly uncovered, thus keeping up the heat of the air that 

 is in actual contact with the body. We have, therefore, produced locally 

 within doors the same conditions which may be supposed to accelerate 

 the metabolism of a dweller under the tropical sun. 



The effect of the over-heated houses is more direct among the Eskimos 

 upon the women than upon the men, for they remain indoors a larger 

 part of the winter. So far as the warmth of the body out-of-doors is 



* Bartlett estimates the temperature within doors in winter of the houses 

 of the Eskimos and Eskimo-like people of Northeast Siberia at 100° F. See 

 "Last Voyage of the Karluk," p. 211. To judge by his account these Sibe- 

 rians do not ventilate their houses as well as the North Alaskan and Macken- 

 zie Eskimos used to do, although his description of the foulness of the air 

 is only a little more lurid than one that would be true of some of the 

 Barrow Eskimo houses to-day that are cold because they are chilled through 

 the thin walls by conduction and because fuel is scarce. In such houses 

 every crevice by which cold air might get in is stuffed up with something. 

 Not infrequently the keyhole is plugged with chewing-gum. 



