MURDOCH. ] LAMPS. 107 
luncheon of porridge or something of the sort, is now cooked over these 
lamps. Two such lamps burning at the ordinary rate give light enough 
to enable one to read and write with ease when sitting on the ban- 
quette, and easily keep the temperature between 50° and 60° F. in the 
coldest weather. In the collection are three house lamps, two complete 
and one merely a fragment, and three traveling lamps. 
Fig. 47 (No. 89879) [872] is a typical house lamp, though rather a 
small specimen. It iscarved out of soft gray soapstone and is 17 inches 
long. The back is nearly vertical, while the front flares strongly out- 
ward. The back wall is eut down vertically inside with a narrow 
rounded brim and the front curves gradually in from the very edge to 
the bottom of the cavity, which is 15 inches deep in the middle. The 
posterior third of the cavity is occupied by a flat, straight shelf with a 
sloping edge about 0-7 inch high. About a third of one end of the lamp 
ics 
Fic. 48.—Sundstone lamp. 
has been broken off obliquely and mended, as usual, with stitches. 
There are two of these neatly countersunk in channels. The specimen 
has been long in use and is thoroughly incrusted with oil and soot. No. 
89880 [1731] (Fig. 48) is peculiar, from the material of which it is made. 
This is a coarse, gritty stone, rather soft, but much more difficult to work 
than the soapstone. It is rudely worked into something the same shape 
as the type, but has the cavity but slightly hollowed out, without a shelf, 
and only a little steeper behind than in front. The idea at once sug- 
gests itself that this lamp, which is very old and sooty, was made at 
Point Barrow and was an attempt to imitate the imported lamps with 
stone obtained from the beds reported by Lieut. Ray in Kulugrua. 
There is, of course, no means of proving this supposition. There is 
no mention of any material except soapstone being made into lamps 
by the Greenlanders or other eastern Eskimo, but the lamps from 
Kadiak and Bristol Bay in the National Museum are made of some hard 
gray stone. 
Fig. 49, No. 56673 [133], is a traveling lamp, and is a miniature of the 
large lamp, No. 89879 [872], 8-7 inches long, 4-2 wide, and 1 inch high, also 
of soapstone and without a shelf. The front also is straighter, and the 
whole more roughly made. No. 89882 [1298] is another traveling lamp, 
also of soapstone, and made of about half of a large lamp. It has been 
