174 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



been found we get out our sixtecn-inch butcher knives or twenty- 

 inch machetes and cut the snow into domino-shaped blocks about 

 four inches thick, fifteen to twenty inches wide and twenty to 

 thirty-five inches long. These blocks, according to their size and 

 the density of the snow, will weigh from fifty to a hundred pounds, 

 and must be strong enough to stand not only their own weight when 

 propped up on edge or carried around, but if they are intended 

 for the lower tiers of the house, must be capable of supporting the 

 weight of three to five hundred pounds of other blocks resting upon 

 them. 



The house itself is built preferably on a level part of the drift 

 where the snow is three or more feet deep. The first block is set 

 on edge as a domino might be on a table, but with your knife you 

 slightly undercut the inner edge so as to make the block lean in- 

 ward at a very slight angle if the house is to be a big one, or at a 

 considerable angle if it is to be a small one. If, to use the lan- 

 guage of physics, you want to lean the block over enough to bring 

 the line of the center of gravity outside the base, this can be 

 done by putting up a second block at the same time and propping 

 one against the other. But this is never done in actual practice, 

 for a house so small as to necessitate it would be too small for 

 human habitation. 



The oval or circle that is to be the ground plan may be deter- 

 mined by eye as the builder sets up the blocks one after the other; 

 but in practice I make an outline with a string with pegs at either 

 end, one peg planted where the center of the house is to be and 

 the other used to describe the circumference, somewhat as a school- 

 boy may use two pencils and a string to make a circle on a piece 

 of paper. I find that even the best of snowhouse builders, Eskimo 

 or white, if they rely on the eye alone, will now and then err in 

 the size of the house, making it uncomfortably small or unneces- 

 sarily large for the intended number of occupants. But with a 

 string a simple mathematical calculation always tells how many 

 feet of radius will accommodate the intended number of lodgers. 



It will be seen by the photographs that when you once have your 

 first block standing on edge, it is a simple matter to prop all the 

 other blocks up by leaning one against the other. The nature of 

 snow is such that when a block has been standing on a snowbank 

 or leaning on another block for five or ten minutes in frosty weather, 

 it is cemented to the other blocks and to the snow below at all 

 points of contact and can be moved only by exerting force enough 

 to break it. 



