INNUITS OF OUR AECTIC COAST. 123 



with their legs crossed. The husband's time is employed in making or repairing his hunt- 

 ing and fishing implements, while the woman attends to her cooking and sewing. In the 

 front wall are several windows, about two feet square, netted with the intestines of seals and 

 the integuments of fish maws, of so close and compact a texture that they exclude the 

 wind and snow, while admitting a good deal of light. A bench runs the whole length of 

 the room under the windows, and is used for strangers to sleep and sit on. iSTear each 

 pillar there is a place for the lamp. A block of wood laid on a hearth of stones supports a 

 low three-legged stool, and on this stands the crescent-shaped lamp, a foot in diameter, 

 hewn out of soft stone, with an oval bowl of wood under it to catch the oil that may run 

 over. In this lamp, which is filled with seal oil they place filaments of moss instead of 

 cotton wick, which burns with a fianie so bright that the house is not only illuminated, but 

 warmed by its several lamps. Over the lamp an oblong kettle of stone (now, of course, of 

 metal), an utensil of the greatest importance, is suspended by four cords from the roof. It 

 is a foot in diameter and various lengths, and every kind of food is cooked in it. Still 

 higher is a wooden rack on which the}' spread their wet boots and clothes to dry. There 

 are as many lamp-places in a house as there are tamilies, and more than one lamp is 

 frequently kept burning day and night in each, so that the temperature is kept warm and 

 even. Xo steam or smoke is perceptible, and they are perfectly secure from accidents by 

 fire. The smell, however, from so many train-oil lamps with such large quantities of fish 

 and flesh boiling over them, and particularly the fumes from the vessels in which the skins 

 are steeped for dressing, are extremely offensive to unaccustomed nostrils, though habit, it 

 is said, soon renders the etfluvia bearable. In other respects their housekeeping may well 

 excite admiration, whether we consider the ingenuity with which all their necessaries are 

 crowded into so small a space, or their contentedness in a poverty which appears to them the 

 height of abundance, or the remarkable order and quietness with which they move in their 

 contracted dwellings. 



Adjoining their dwellings stand their storehouses, built of stones in the form of a 

 baker's oven, containing their fall stock of meat, blubber and dried fish. "What they catch 

 during the winter is buried in the snow, and the train-oil is preserved in seal-skins. Close 

 by, their boats are suspended, out of reach of the dogs, on long poles, with the hunting 

 apparatus under, and tied to them. In September, the building of houses, or the repairing 

 of those whose roofs have fallen in during the summer, occupies the women, for the men do 

 not engage in any kind of domestic labour, except wood and bone work. They move into 

 their houses during the early part of October, and in March, April or May, as soon as the 

 snow disappears and the crumbling roof threatens to fall in on them, they gladly move into 

 their tents. In the erection of these tents they pave a quadrangular area with small, flat 

 flagstones, round which they fix from ten to forty poles, coming together in a point at the 

 top, and resting on a framework about the height of a man. Over these ribs they hang a 

 double covering of seal-skins, lined by the more wealthy with reindeer-skins with the ftir 

 side inward. The lower edge of this covering is kept down on the ground by heavy stones, 

 and the interstices are stuff'ed with moss to prevent the wind from overturning the tent. A 

 curtain, neatlv woven of seals' 2:ut, haners before the entrance, bordered bv a hem of red or 

 blue cloth and embroidered with white. Cold air cannot penetrate this hanging, though it 

 admits a plentiful suppl}^ of light, and the tent coverings project considerably on all sides 

 of the tent, making a kind of porch in which the inmates deposit their provisions, etc. It 



