THE IGLO 



Eskimos have very little choice in the matter of 

 housing ; and to look at them, broad and strapping 

 folks that they are, you would agree that such a life 

 suits them well. Since the Mission reached them, 

 a few families have respectable little houses of 

 boards ; but in former times the only alternative 

 to tents and snow houses was the awful Eskimo 

 iglo. There are a few of these iglos in Killinek 

 dark and noisome dens. 



Try to picture a hut of turf and stones, propped, 

 maybe, on rough stumps and branches which have 

 been toilsomely gathered from the sea : the only 

 ventilation is the occasional breath of air that wafts 

 sluggishly along the dark tunnel-like porch ; the 

 only window is a square of membrane, brown and 

 greasy-looking, stretched over a hole in the roof; 

 the floor is a sodden patch of trampled mud ! That 

 is a heathen Eskimo iglo ; and I cannot imagine 

 anything more dismally unhealthy. 



If wooden houses are to be, the wood must be 

 brought by ship. There are no trees in Killinek. 

 The land looked bare and bleak enough, I thought, 

 as I saw it from the ship ; it looked far barer when 

 I was actually on it, wandering among the hills. 

 There were plenty of wild flowers, even in Killinek, 

 and plenty of moss ; but no wood. Here and there 

 I came upon patches of feeble-looking brushwood 

 crawling among the stones, dry and wizened, and 

 this, I suppose, serves the people for fuel ; but the 

 ground was bare of the berries which are such a 

 plentiful food-supply further south. The Killinek 

 people have to go far afield to gather berries, miles 

 and miles of trudging over moss and rocks, to find 

 here and there a sheltered patch, while the Eskimos 



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