MURDOCH. ] SNOW HOUSES—TENTS. 83 
guns.' Small storehouses of snow or ice are built to contain provisions. 
In the autumn many such houses are built in the village, of slabs of 
clear fresh-water ice about 4 inches thick cemented together by freezing. 
These resemble the buildings of fresh-water ice at Iglulik, described by 
Capt. Lyon.? 
Other temporary structures of snow, sometimes erected in the village, 
serve as workshops. One of these, which was built at the edge of the 
village in April, 1883, was an oblong building long enough to hold an 
umiak, giving sufficient room to get around it and work, and between 6 
and 7 feet high. The walls were of blocks of snow and the roof of can- 
vas stretched over poles. One end was left open, but covered by a canvas 
curtain, and a banquette of snow ran along each side. It was lighted 
by oblong slabs of clear ice set into the walls, and warmed by several 
Jamps. Several men in succession used this house for repairing and 
rigging up their umiaks, and others who had whittling to do brought 
their work to the same place. 
Such boat shops are sometimes built by digging a broad trench in a 
snowbank and roofing it with canvas. Women dig small holes in the 
snow, which they roof over with canvas and use for work-rooms in which 
to dress seal skins. In such cases there is probably some superstitious 
reason, which we failed to learn, for not doing the work in the iglu. 
The tools used in building the snow houses are the universal wooden 
snow-shovel and the ivory snow-knife, for cutting and trimming the 
blocks. At the present day saws are very much used for cutting the 
blocks, and also large iron knives (whalemen’s “boarding knives,” ete.) 
obtained from the ships. 
Tents (tupék)—During the summer all the natives live in tents, 
which are pitched on dry places upon the top of the cliffs or upon the 
gravel beach, usually in small camps of four or five tents each. A few 
families go no farther than the dry banks just southwest of the village, 
while the rest of the inhabitants who have not gone eastward trading 
or to the rivers hunting reindeer are strung along the coast. The first 
camp below Utkiavwiit is just beyond the double lagoon of Nunava, 
about 4 miles away, and the rest at intervals of 2 or 3 miles, usually at 
some little inlet or stream at places called Sé’kqluka, Naké/drixo, Kuos- 
u’gru, Nuni/ktuau, Ipersua, Wa‘likpa (Refuge Inlet, according to Capt. 
Maguire’s map, Parl. Rep. for 1854, opp. p. 186), Er/nivwin, Si/naru, 
and Sa/kaimna. It is these summer camps seen from passing ships 
which have given rise to the accounts of numerous villages along this 
coast. There is usually a small camp on the beach at Si‘nnyt and one 
at Imé/kpain, while a few go to Pernyt even early in the season. 
As the sea es, the people from the lower camps travel up the coast 
and concentrate at Seen where ey meet the Nuwunmiun, the Nuna- 
1 Firearms can not be carried into a warm room in cold weather, as the moisture in the air peat 
ately condenses on the cold surface of the metal. 
2 Journal, p. 204; see also the plate opposite p. 358 of Parry's 2d Voyage. 
