HOW WE PASSED THE WIN TEX. 203 



I have already told you how they 

 built their curious little houses of snow 

 for winter dwellings, and how much they 

 looked like the half of a huge egg-shell 

 resting on the side of a hill covered with 

 sncw. Now, in order to make these 

 houses of snow igloos, as the makers 

 call them the snow must be of a certain 

 hardness and texture, so that the blocks 

 or huge snow-bricks, if you would so 

 call them will hold together when hand- 

 ling them, and after they are in the walls 

 of the white building. It must have 

 been quite cold so as to freeze the snow 

 into a sort of homogeneous mass, and 

 it must have been packed down by the 

 wind a good deal to make it compact 

 and solid. The first snow of the coming 

 winter does not make good strong snow- 

 blocks for the igloos, however deep it 



