158 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



of this trench in under the wall of the house to meet a 

 hole that Ovayuak was digging down through the floor 

 at that spot. Later we built of snow blocks a porch 

 over this trench, making the regular Eskimo entrance. 



As soon as the trench had been connected with the 

 interior of the house, I crawled in and watched the rest 

 of the process. Scattered all around him on the floor 

 Ovayuak had fragments of blocks that had been unsound 

 and had broken in handling, and there were other blocks 

 which for one reason or another he had not used when I 

 passed them in to him. Out of these he now made a 

 platform a foot high, covering about two-thirds of the 

 floor space. Over this platform his wife later spread a 

 layer of long-haired caribou skins with the hair down. 

 Over that she put a second layer of skins with the hair 

 side up and on top of that our blankets — some of them 

 reindeer and others cotton or wool, 



A snowhouse is best suited to being heated with a 

 lamp, either the Eskimo lamp or, even better, a blue 

 flame kerosene stove or an alcohol lamp. We were, how- 

 ever, now traveling through a country well supplied with 

 driftwood and for that reason we carried a sheet-iron 

 stove instead of a heating lamp. We took two pieces 

 of wood about four feet long each and placed them on 

 the snow as far apart as the length of the stove. On 

 top of these we put some sheet iron and on top of it 

 the stove itself. A hole was made in the snow roof big 

 enough for the stovepipe and over that part of the roof 

 we spread a piece of canvas about four feet square that 

 had a stove ring sewed to it through which the stovepipe 

 projected. 



I thoughtlessly imagined that when the fire was lighted 

 it would soon thaw a huge hole in the wall back of the 



