61 



tunnel which furnishes ventilation, and an outside porch which is 

 used for a storehouse. The iglus are 10 to 12 feet across, and the 

 stone walls 3 or 4 feet high. The roof slopes to a peak or bowl- 

 shape, and is upheld by rough branches and stumps of driftwood 

 obtained from the sea. The floor is a mass of trampled mud. A 

 sealskin-gut window lets in the light. The houses are narrow 

 and low and indescribably dirty. 



These iglus reminded me strongly of the old stone houses of 

 the Alaskan Eskimo in the Bering Strait district. The Central 

 Eskimo make use of old stone houses of similar construction. 1 

 From Steensby's description of the old stone huts of the Polar 

 Eskimo, I should judge that they were made on the same general 

 plan. It is well known that the Greenlanders make huts of stone 

 and turf, and the Mackenzie River iglu is not materially different 

 from the Alaskan. There appears to be one general plan of 

 construction in all these old stone iglus. There is a partly 

 underground room with stone walls. The roof is supported 

 by stones or whale-ribs, or wooden timbers, according to which 

 material is available, and covered with sod or dirt. Entrance 

 is through a long tunnel of wood or stone, with or without a 

 storehouse at the end or side. The inner arrangement, with 

 stone or wooden platforms and window of seal gut, is not different 

 from that of the snow-house, except in material. I am inclined 

 to think from its prevalence in all parts of the Eskimo territory, 

 that the old stone iglu is the typical Eskimo house rather than 

 the snow-house, and that the latter is only a seasonal type 

 which has developed into the typical house of those tribes, like 

 the Copper and Central Eskimo, who build in winter on the sea- 

 ice. 



WHALEBONE HOUSES. 



The old Eskimo tribes on the northeastern coast of Labrador 

 formerly constructed houses of the bones of the whale, according 

 to one of my informants. The sides were built of stones, and 

 whale ribs, meeting in the middle overhead and overlaid with the 

 shoulder-blades of the whale, formed the roof. Two large whale 

 jaw-bones marked the entrance way, which was a long tunnel 



> See Boas. op. cit., pp. 548, 549. 



