THE LIFE AT TUKTUYAKTOK 135 



oil down from the slab of fat. A lamp once properly 

 prepared in this way will burn with regular fluctuations 

 six or eight hours at a time. 



Ordinarily the lamps that are properly trimmed when 

 people go to bed in the evening are still burning brightly 

 the next morning. Occasionally, however, some woman 

 forgets to put quite enough blubber on the hook above the 

 lamp. In that case the lamp will begin to smoke during 

 the night. I do not think the Eskimos have keener ears 

 or keener eyes than Europeans, but they certainly have 

 a much more delicate sense of smell. The least bit of 

 smoke in the house will wake up somebody who shouts 

 to the particular woman that her lamp is smoking and 

 warning her to look after it. 



Because the walls and roof of the house were so thick, 

 scarcely any cold penetrated in to us that way and the 

 only chill came by way of the fresh air that ventilated 

 the house. The floor of the dwelling was level with the 

 ground outside. The entrance was a kind of tunnel about 

 thirty feet long and covered by a shed. The tunnel was 

 about four feet deep where it came in under the house 

 wall, so that you had to stoop low to enter. Once inside 

 the wall, you could stand up in the end of the tunnel 

 with your shoulders in the house. We spoke of this en- 

 trance as the door, but it was really only a square hole 

 in the floor about four feet in diameter. There was a lid 

 available with which to cover the door, but I never saw 

 it used. The temperature in the alleyway was about as 

 cold as outdoors but our house was so full of warm air 

 that the cold air in the alleyway could not enter, for cold 

 air is heavy and will not rise into any space occupied by 

 warm air. 



In the roof we had a ventilator about four inches in 



