MUEDOCB.] SNOW II0LI8KS. 81 



usual inner apartments only a species of bencili of raised eardi laii 

 round it)."' These buildiii^rn jivg iiuiiierons and i)articnlarly larj;f and 

 much used south of Bering Strait, where they are also used as stcaiii 

 bath houses.^ 



Snow houses (apuya). — Houses of snow aic used only lciii|ioraril\', as 

 for Instance at the huntiiii;' giouuds on tlic i i\crs, and occasionallA' Ity 

 visitors at the vilhige wlio |irclcr liavin- llicir own (|iiarters. For 

 example, a man and his wife who had hccn li\ inn nt Nuwilk (h-cidcd in 

 the winter of lSSl*-'8.'{ to come down \\w\ sclilr ;if I'tkiavwifi, wIhmc 



the woman's parents hved. Instead of going lo ( of t!u> houses in 



the village, they built tliemselves a snow house in wiiicli tliey spent 

 the winter. The man s:iid \\v intended to built a wooden house the 

 next season. These houses are not built on the dome or beehi\e sliape so 

 often described among the Eskimo of the middh^, region of Dr. Kink.-' 



The idea naturally suggests itself that this form of building is 

 really a snow tupek or tent, while the form used at Point liarrow is 

 simply the igln built of snow instead of wood. \Vhen built on level 

 ground, as in the village, the snow house consists of an oblong icioiu 

 about G feet by 12, with walls made of bh)cks of snow, aiul high cMiongh 

 for a person to stand up inside. Beams or i)oles are laid across the top, 

 and over these is stretched a roof of canvas. At the south end is a 

 low narrow covered passage of snow about 10 feet long leading to a 

 low door not over 2^ feet high, above wliich is the window, made, as 

 before described, of seal enti-ail. The opening at the outer enil of the 

 passage is at the top, so that one climbs over a low wall of snow to 

 enter the house. 



At the right side of the passage, close to the house, is a small tire- 

 place about 2.^ feet scpiare and built of slabs of snow, with a, smoke liole 

 in the top au(l a sticdc stuck across at the proper height to hang a pot 

 on. When the tirst tire is built in such a tireplace there is considerable 

 melting of the surface of the simw, but as soon as the fire is allowed 

 to go out this freezes to a hard glaze of ice, which afterwards melts 

 only to a trilling extent. Oi)posite to the door of the house, which is 

 protected by a curtain of canvas, corresponding to the Greenlandic 

 ubkuaK, "a skin which is hung up before the entrance of the house,'" 

 the floor is raised into a banquette about 18 inches high, on which are 

 laid boards and skins. f!ui)boards are excavated under the bancinettc, 

 or in the walls, and pegs are driven into the walls to hang things on. 



1 Tents, etc., p. 136. 



^ See references to Ball and Petrotf, .ibove. 



s Parry, 2iiil Voy., p. ICO and plate opposite; Franklin, lat E.'cped. vol. 2, pp. 43-47, ground pl.in. p. 46 ; 

 Boas, "Central Eskimo,"pp. 539-553; Kumlien, Contributions, etc., p. 31; Petitot, Monogr;iphie, el/-., 

 p. xvii (a full description with a ground plan and' section on p. six), and all the popular accounts of 

 the Eskimo. , , ,. „ 



^Gronlandsk Ordbog, p. 404: Kane'.« 1st Crinnell Exp., p. 40, calls it a " skin-coverod door. (,oni. 

 pare, also, the skin or matting hun^ ..vcr the entrance of the houses at Xorton Sound, 1>:,I1. .\lasl<,-, p. 

 13, and the hear-skin doors of the N uuataiiuuuii and other Kotzebue Sound natives, meutioucl i,y or. 

 Simpson, op. cit., p. 259. 

 9 ETH 6 



