60 



placed and the mitten drier and kettle swung, and beds made of 

 reindeer skins laid over willow twigs. A slab of clear fresh- 

 water ice was used as a window. The door was closed at night 

 with a slab of frozen snow. The tunnel through which the house 

 was entered ran uphill to the door. This ensured a constant 

 supply of fresh air. It is said by Rasmussen that the Polar 

 (or Smith Sound) Eskimo did not understand this ingenious 

 variation, but used to build their tunnels on a level, until they 

 learned better from immigrants from Cape York.^ 



Some Eskimo, who wished to live in a grander style, would 

 join two or three snow-houses together by tunnels. One house 

 then served as a living room; another, which was spread with 

 polar bear skins, as the bedroom; and a third, as a storehouse. 

 When the snow-house is first built, it is dazzlingly clean and 

 beautiful. But it does not long remain so, owing to the accumu- 

 lation of soot, rotten meat, and greasy clothing. It soon be- 

 comes so filthy that even the Eskimos are forced to move out. 

 Towards spring the roofs melt and fall in. The Eskimos then 

 patch them with skins or else take to their tents, although it 

 may be a month before the ice breaks up and the winter is over. 

 The Cape Chidley Eskimo are a very hardy people. The mis- 

 sionaries told me that they kept no fires in their homes, and com- 

 plained of the heat when they visited their brethren to the south, 

 who had stoves in their houses. Dr. Hutton,^ in his vivid account 

 of five years work among the Labrador Eskimo, mentions a 

 characteristic incident of an old woman from Cape Chidley who 

 went to Okkak to live. She complained bitterly of the heat 

 in the houses. "It is breaking my life," she would say, "it is 

 breaking my life." 



The natural covering of fat, obtained from his oily diet of 

 meat and blubber, kept the old time Eskimo sufficiently warm. 



STONE IGLUS. 



There still remain at Hebron, Okkak, and Killinek old stone 

 iglus roofed with turf, some of which are inhabited. These are 

 gloomy little huts, built partly underground, with a long entrance 



> Knud Rasmussen, The people of the polar north, p. 321. 

 *Hutton, Among the Eskimos oj Labrador, Philadelphia. 1912. 



