56 REPORT ON THE INTRODUCTION OP 



tion, and to which reference has been made before, it is all water-soaked, 

 and unless cut and piled up where it is not exj)osed to the rains of 

 summer, it is hard to make burn and gives out little heat. 



Another trouble we experienced, and it became an almost daily one, 

 was with stovepipes. As no earthen or terra cotta chimneys were 

 received at the station, it became necessary to make stovepipes answer 

 for chimneys. As a consequence, the long spells of rain in summer 

 and the snow beating; in and about them in winter caused them to rust 

 badly, and before winter was half through we were obliged to make 

 stovepipes out of tin oil cans, which served a passably good purpose. 



In October last I made a trip by canoe to Cape Prince of Wales, and 

 the teachers very kindly let me have an extra large box heating-stove, 

 which I brought to the station and without which we could have car- 

 ried on no school. And even with this large stove in the apartment 

 designed as the living-room in the frame building, there were several 

 weeks during the winter when it could not be made comfortable enough 

 to teach in. It was discovered one day towards spring that the stove 

 had a crack extending the whole length of the bottom, which was 

 doubtless caused by building a fire in it when it was full of frost. 



On account of being obliged to use stovepipes we were in constant 

 dread of lire. On two occasions the frame building caught fire, and on 

 November 3 would have been burned to the ground, with its entire con- 

 tents, had it not been for the timely arrival on the scene of Mr. Gibson 

 who, with the aid of some natives, succeeded in putting the fire out. 



Immediately after the building took fire the last time a cache was 

 constructed similar to those used by the natives. A platform was 

 made of plank laid on the tops of logs buried in the ground, on which 

 were placed most of our biscuits, Hour, and such other stores as would 

 not be injured by cold weather. In this condition they kept splendidly 

 all winter, the cache being opened and goods removed as occasion 

 demanded. 



It is almost a universal custom among the Eskimos to erect caches 

 on the outside of their houses in which most of their goods, furs, and 

 implements arc placed for safekeeping. They are never molested, and 

 a native would as quickly desecrate one of the graves as to disturb the 

 cache of another. 



This experiment supplied us with another valuable idea for the 

 future, and with a properly constructed cache a storeroom only large 

 enough to hold the perishable goods is all that is necessary. It should 

 be built high enough to admit of free circulation of air under it and 

 with an apartment constructed with a roof that would shed rain, 

 with the sides tight. ^\' i 1 1 1 such a cache it could be used in summer 

 as well as winter. 



In this connection I will state that in a number of boxes of biscuits, 

 when opened, one fourth of the biscuits were found moldy and unfit 

 to be eaten. In the early pari of the summer they were stored away 



