MURDOCH. ] TENTS. 85 
frame, so that the edges do not meet in front except at the top, leaving 
a triangular space or doorway, filled in with a curtain of which part is a 
translucent membrane, which can be covered at night with a piece of 
cloth. A string runs from the upper corner of the cloth round the apex 
of the tent and comes obliquely down the front to about the middle of 
the edge of the other end of the cloth. The two edges are also held 
together by a string across the entrance. Heavy articles, stones, gravel, 
ete., are laid on the flap of the tent to keep it down, and spears, pad- 
dles, ete., are laid up against the outside. (See Fig. 15, from a photo- 
graph by Lieut. Ray.) 
Inside of the tent there is much less furniture than in the iglu, as the 
lamp is not needed for heating and lighting, and the cooking is done 
outdoors on tripods erected over fires. The sleeping place is at the 
Fic. 15.—Tent on the beach at Utkiavwin. 
back of the tent, and is usually marked off by laying a log across the 
floor, and spreading boards on the ground. Not more than one family 
usually occupy a tent. The tents at the whaling camp mentioned above 
were, at first, fitted out with snow passages and fireplaces like a snow 
hut, and many had a low wall of snow around them, but these had all 
melted before the camp was abandoned. 
These tents differ considerably in model from those in use in the east, 
though all are made by stretching a cover over radiating poles. For 
example, the tents in Greenland have the front nearly vertical,! while at 
Cumberland Gulf two sets of poles connected by a ridgepole are used, 
those for the front being the shorter.2. The fashion at Iglulik is some- 
1 Egede, Greenland, p.117; Crantz, vol.1, p. 141; Rink, Tales, etc., p. 7. 
2? Kumlien, op. cit., p. 33. 
