AN AUTUMN JOURNEY 93 



The village at which we had arrived was made of houses 

 built on the general plan of the dome tent. First they 

 had made a hemispherical framework of pliant willows 

 with a floor space perhaps ten feet across, and a dome- 

 shaped roof, so high that a tall man could stand erect 

 in the center. Sometimes the height of the house was de- 

 termined by the height of the man that built it. One of 

 our hosts, Ningaksik, was about six feet tall and his house 

 was the loftiest. 



When the preliminary framework had been made of 

 strong willows, they had woven in among them smaller 

 willows until the frame really resembled a basket. Into 

 the spaces between the willows they had then stuffed 

 wads of moss and over them had been laid a layer of 

 moss. On top of the whole had been sifted soft snow. 

 This made a house so warm that, although there was 

 fairly good ventilation through a pipe in the roof, it was 

 still not necessary to do any more than barely keep 

 a fire in the stove to maintain the house at as high 

 a temperature as we consider comfortable in American 

 houses. When cooking was going on, the houses became 

 uncomfortable to me from the heat, although the Eskimos 

 did not mind it. In general the Mackenzie Paver and 

 Alaska Eskimos keep their winter houses anything from 

 ten to twenty degrees warmer than the typical steam- 

 heated houses of our cities. 



There were only three real houses in this village, for 

 two of the families were still living in tents. Up to our 

 arrival they had been using fireplaces but now all but one 

 of them installed stoves which v/e had brought from the 

 coast. I found especial interest in watching the cooking 

 in the house where they still used a fireplace. There was 

 nothing in the way of a chimney nor was the fireplace at 



