SNOW HOUSES 



snow, and reached by a tunnel along which it is just 

 possible for a man to crawl. The tunnel is dug so 

 that it runs uphill to the door ; partly because snow 

 houses are usually built on a slope or bank, and 

 partly because it is the right thing to the inscrutable 

 Eskimo mind. 



The window is a sheet of clear fresh-water ice, 

 which lights the house most gloriously. The inside 

 of a new snow house is dazzlingly bright ; even the 

 mean glimmer of the seal-oil lamp is reflected and 

 magnified by the shining white walls. That is a 

 new snow house : but after a few weeks, what a 

 I change ! The walls are begrimed with soot and 

 grease, the floor is strewn with all the litter of an 

 Eskimo dwelling, the air is stuffy and ill smelling 

 nay, after a time the place becomes unbearable 

 even to its Eskimo tenants, and they build them- 

 selves a new house somewhere else. Not a very 

 difficult matter where good snow for building is so 

 ready to hand ! 



I have found that a snow house makes a fairly 

 snug shelter, though the air never gets much above 

 freezing-point. 



Some men " do things in style," and make quite 

 ja suite of rooms by joining two or three snow huts 

 |by tunnels. One hut serves as the living room, and 

 harbours the big stone lamp or stove ; another is 

 ithe bedroom, spread with polar bear skins ; and a 

 third may be a sort of unsavoury store house, piled 

 with dogs' harness, seal blubber, skins, dried meat 

 ind fish, and the tent stowed away till the thaw 

 pomes. 



Beyond the snow house while the snow is hard, 



Id the tent for the rest of the year, the Killinek 



37 



in 



