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248 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH. ANN. 18 
yards apart and projecting several feet above the top of the roof. 
Lengthwise over the top of the house extend hewed sticks which hold 
in position the upright posts and the logs that bind the upright planks. 
The use of crosspieces fastened at each end to the top of upright 
timbers is a common method adopted by the Eskimo of Norton sound 
and the lower Yukon for binding the framework of their structures. 
Braces, which fit into a notch in an upright post with the other end 
planted in the ground, are also commonly used. Sometimes the walls 
of summer houses are built with upright sticks all around, as can be 
seen at Ikogmut, but more commonly the ends are formed of upright 
pieces and the sides of timbers laid horizontally. The inner frame- 
work is bound together by withes or wooden pins and held in place at 
the eaves by joists, across which are thrown poles or planks, forming 
an open attic or platform for the storage of dried fish and other arti- 
cles of food, nets, and various implements. The roof is double-pitched. 
and covered with slabs or planks over which pieces of bark are laid. 
Along the sides of the room, at from one to three feet above the floor, are 
broad sleeping platforms, which accommodate from one to three fami- 
lies. In the front, a foot or two above the ground, a semilunar piece 
is cut from each of two adjoining planks, forming an oval doorway 
about three feet high. Small square or round windows, a few inches in 
diameter, are sometiines eut in the walls near the sleeping platforms. 
There is also plenty of ventilation from other directions, as very little 
effort is made to prevent the wind from circulating freely through the 
numerous cracks. 
Plate LXXX1, which represents the storehouses at Ikogmut, shows 
also one of these summer houses in the background. 
In the winter of 1880 the people at Paimut were found living in their 
summer houses on a high bank overlooking the Yukon, and I was told 
that their winter village on the island in the river had been swept 
away by high water the season before. 
At Chukwhik, just above Ikoginut, the winter houses, as is usual in 
this district, were arranged with the sleeping platforms raised about 
three feet from the ground, leaving space below for storing supplies. 
The house at which I stopped was supplied with three of these plat- 
forms, each having its oil lamp on an upright post. Near one lamp a 
woman was making a pair of ornamented gloves, and by another lamp 
a womal was braiding a straw mat, 
At a village in the Big-lake district, lying in the strip of country 
between the two nearest points of lower Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, 
the houses were of the ordinary kind, except that they were rather 
smaller than on the Yukon and had extraordinarily long entrance 
passages. 
At the base of Kuslevak mountains the houses were made of smaller 
timbers, brought a long distance from the coast in boats, or of a 
light framework of short, crooked alder trunks covered with brush 
