ESKIMO HOUSES 



thing that looks like a heap of turf or sods, with a 

 battered tin pipe sticking out of the top, and a long, 

 low tunnel leading up to one side, and you have a 

 fairly good mental picture of the outside of an iglo. 

 Inside there is a lining of smoke-blackened boughs 

 and trunks of little trees, all shiny with grease ; a 

 small allowance of light filters dimly in through a 

 membrane of seal's bowel stretched across a hole in 

 the roof, and the door, hanging limp upon its seal- 

 hide hinges, permits the only suggestion of air to 

 waft sluggishly along the tunnel porch. But the 

 smell ! There is nothing like it : it is the rancid, 

 fishy smell of stale seal-oil. It smites your nostrils 

 when you go in, and the heat from the little iron 

 stove combines with the smell to make the stuffy 

 atmosphere almost unbearable. Can the Eskimos be 

 healthy in homes like that ? Is it any wonder that 

 I pine to see such dens abolished ? 



But the Eskimos are progressing ; iglos are get- 

 ting few and far between, and little wooden huts are 

 cropping up like mushrooms. Long efforts have at 

 last aroused ambition in the Eskimo mind. Your 

 modern hunter wants a wooden house : it only costs 

 a little trouble, and he knows that it is worth it. 

 Some fine spring morning he calls his dogs together, 

 and hies him to the woods. He builds a tiny snow 

 hut for shelter, and lives on tough dried meat. He 

 is after timber for a house, and from dawn to dusk 

 he searches for the best of the poor stunted trees and 

 chops them down. Then he builds a sort of scaffold, 

 and gets his wife to help him saw the planks. Many 

 a time have I seen them at work with their big pit- 

 saws : the man is top sawyer on the scaffold, while the 

 woman stands below and does her share, and so they 



