258 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT (ETH. ANN. 18 
jawbone of a whale, the upper end of which was slightly curved inward 
to meet the ribs crossed on the top. The jawbone, held in place by 
lashings and heavy stones, was thus made to sustain the weight of the 
structure. Over this framework tanned walrus hides were laid and 
secured by lashings and heavy stones or whale vertebrx attached to the 
ends of cords. The front part of the room was used for storing various 
articles of food and property, and the rear part was supplied with pologs, 
or small rooms, made by sewing reindeer skins into the form of a cov- 
ered square or rectangular box without a bottom, about 7 or 8 by 10 or 
12 feet square and about 4 feet high, which were held in place by raw- 
hide ropes extending from each upper corner and the middle of the 
sides to the framework of the roof. In this way very close, warm rooms 
were made inside the house, in which, on a small raised platform of 
planks or beaten earth, the beds were placed. Each family had its own 
polog. Wood seemed to be very scarce among these people. The 
illustration shows the situation of the village and the position of the 
houses. The elevated platform on the right, for sleds and boats, is 
made of whales’ jawbones (figure 85). 
Seattered along the hillside among the occupied houses were the 
remains of many ruined houses, which were similar in character to the 
dwellings seen on the Diomede islands—partly underground, with 
external stone walls—and a very large number of pits showed the sites 
of still older houses. It was evident that in earlier times these people 
had used underground houses exclusively, but more recently had 
abandoned them and built their dwellings in the manner described. 
At Plover bay, on the same coast, the village consisted mainly 
of walrus-hide huts similar to those at East cape, except that they 
had no stone walls about the bases, and the frames were composed of 
driftwood instead of whale ribs; but the interior arrangement of deer- 
skin pologs was the same. The illustration (plate LXXXIII a), from a 
photograph, will give an idea of the exterior of these houses. 
A few sinall, half underground houses of driftwood and whalebones 
covered with earth in the regular Eskimo style, were found here. On 
the northern side of the mouth of the bay a zigzag path leads high up 
on the bluffs to a rock-walled shelter used as a lookout to watch for 
whales or for vessels at sea. 
This village is not very populous, and through the introduction of 
whisky and of various diseases by the whalers, who call here every 
season, the Eskimo at this point are in a fair way to become extinct. 
The accompanying illustration (plate LXXxIV) represents two women 
from this locality. 
St Lawrence island had several large and populous villages previous 
to the year 1879. During the winter of 187980 a famine, accompanied 
by disease, caused the death of at least two-thirds of the entire popu- 
lation of the island, and several villages were completely depopulated. 
During the summer of 1881 I visited these villages on the revenue 
