BY ESKIMO DOG-SLED 83 



on a gently sloping hillside, for there the snow 

 hardens the best ; and Julius told me that a 

 number of places are famous among the 

 Eskimos for good hard building snow, and 

 travellers do their best to reach one of these 

 spots for their camping. 



When once the place was chosen, my drivers 

 were soon at work. Each man armed himself 

 with his huge snow knife, and between them 

 they marked a circle on the snow. Then 

 Johannes retired to the middle and began to 

 dig. He first made a wedge-shaped hole to 

 give himself a start ; and then from the sides 

 of the hole he carved great slabs of the frozen 

 snow. I judged them to be about six or eight 

 inches thick, two or three feet long, and eighteen 

 inches high, and they were nearly as heavy 

 as stone. Johannes just tumbled them out 

 of his hole as fast as he could cut them, and 

 as the hole grew I saw that the slabs were all 

 slightly curved. Julius seized each slab as it 

 toppled out, and carried it gingerly to the 

 edge of the circle. He set the slabs on edge, 

 side by side, and chipped them a little from 

 the top so that they leaned inwards. He pared 

 away the first few with his knife so that the 

 lowest ring, when finished, formed the begin- 

 ning of a spiral. He followed the spiral up, 

 propping each slab against its neighbour, and 



