AN AUTUMN JOURNEY 89 



odorless and almost as hard as concrete, making a sani- 

 tary and pleasant foundation for our floor, whether for 

 the planking or for the shavings and chips. 



Roxy told me that twenty years ago such a house 

 would have been heated with a number of lamps burn- 

 ing seal or whale oil. But we had instead a galvanized 

 iron stove and lived much as prospectors and other 

 pioneers do in the forests of the northwest — only our 

 house stood c. a sandspit running out into the sea and 

 the land back of us was a rolling prairie stretching in 

 higher and higher hills back towards the mountains one 

 or two days' journey away. 



Not long after the freeze-up a party of Eskimos came 

 from the interior to fetch the sledges and other belong- 

 ings which they had left behind with us in September 

 when they had journeyed inland, carrying their belong- 

 ings on their own backs and on the backs of their dogs. 

 Nothing heavy or bulky can readily be transported in 

 that way. They had, therefore, left with us not only 

 their sledges, but also their sheet-iron stoves and many 

 other things they needed, among them spare ammuni- 

 tion and the traps which they were going to use during 

 the winter. 



The season for trapping had now almost arrived. On 

 or near the arctic coast it is considered to begin about 

 the middle of November and to last until early April. 

 Our visitors reported that they had their winter homes 

 just beyond the mountain range, and, as I understood, 

 thirty or forty miles inland. They had killed a number 

 of caribou and expected to kill some more. Half the 

 hunters of that particular village were now at home hunt- 

 ing while the rest had come down to fetch the sleds. 



Roxy and Sten became greatly interested in the stories 



