A SNOW HOUSE 



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 

 mge 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 

 ,he sides of the hole he carved great slabs of the 

 rozen snow. I judged them to be about six or eight 

 nches thick, two or three feet long, and eighteen 

 nches high, and they were nearly as heavy as stone. 

 Johannes just tumbled them out of his hole as fast as 

 le could cut them, and as the hole grew I saw that 

 the slabs were all slightly curved. Julius seized each 

 lab as it toppled out, and carried it gingerly to the 

 ;dge of the circle. He set the slabs on edge, side by 

 side, and chipped them a little from the top so that 

 :hey leaned inwards. He pared away the first few 

 ^vith his knife so that the lowest ring, when finished, 

 brmed the beginning of a spiral. He followed the 

 ipiral up, propping each slab against its neighbour, 

 ind chipping its edge so that it leaned well inward. 

 Meanwhile Johannes got nearer and nearer the wall 

 with his digging, and his work got harder and harder, 

 Jbr instead of tumbling the slabs out he had to pick 

 :hem up and hand them to Julius over the leaning 

 >vall. I thought the wall looked frail and unsafe, but 

 [Julius seemed to think otherwise, for I have often 

 ;een him crawl upon it and lean over to see how 

 Johannes was getting on inside. As a matter of fact, 

 iis weight only pressed the slabs together a bit more 

 firmly ; and I got so used to it that I have sat placidly 

 in a snow house while he crawled over the top. 



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