Dwellings 63 



with a woman's knife, just as the natives farther west scrape their gut windows; 

 these latter, by the way, are totally unknown in Coronation gulf.^ 



Some houses have a small recess built in a corner near the door; this is for 

 storing meat, or for housing a litter of pups. Sometimes the passage is broadened 

 in one place for the same purpose. Often two houses are joined together, or 

 several unite round a common forecourt which forms the village dance-house. 

 The Eskimo is very skilful in modifying, the shape of his hut to suit his needs. 

 One snow-hut in which I lived was dripping badly, besides which it had an awk- 

 ward shape, so its owner knocked out the roof and part of one side and built it 

 up afresh. The warmth of the hut had transformed the inner face of each 

 snow-block into ice to the depth of about an inch, so that he had to chop it 

 away with a small hatchet. This transformation of the snow to ice explains 

 the solidity of a snow-hut, which is so great indeed that a full-grown man can 

 stand on the very top of the roof without its collapsing. The same native who 

 had thus re-shaped his dwelling once made a chimney of snow-blocks in a small 

 snow hut when we were trying to cook inside with chips of driftwood. He 

 derived the notion no doubt from the stove pipes at our station, but it showed 

 at least his versatility and his skill in handling snow. 



A snow-hut is a very comfortable dweUing even in mid-winter, unless the 

 temperature falls unusually low and a blizzard is raging out of doors. Even 

 then, in a well-built hut with a long semi-subterranean^ passage, the natives are 

 not uncomfortable, provided that the lamp can be kept burning to its full extent. 



If the temperature of the hut rises above the freezing-point, the ceiling 

 immediately begins to drip. This often happens when the meals are being 

 cooked, or when the house is filled with people. Slight dripping can usually 

 be stopped by chipping away the ice at the place from which the drops are 

 falling, or by holding against it a lump of snow, which will freeze against the 

 wall and lower the temperature at that spot. Neither method, however, will 

 permanently stop it, unless the temperature of the hut is lowered as well. Often 

 when the ceiling of a hut is thus plastered with lumps of snow, they themselves 

 become soaked like sponges and fall on the inmates' heads; I have seen this 

 happen to a native lying in his sleeping bag, with a rather amusing result. 

 The only sure remedy is to knock a small hole in the roof, so that the cold air 

 streaming in will freeze the walls again. Old huts are pitted with many holes 

 where the roof and walls have dripped and melted away. By day the natives 

 take no notice unless the weather is stormy, but at night, before going to bed, 

 someone will often go outside and close all the chinks with snow. It is not 

 always pleasant, though, to stumble about in the darkness and clamber up on 

 to the roof, so frequently they merely block the largest holes from inside with 

 scraps of skin or mittens, or with handwipers of ptarmigan skins, and let the 

 others remain. The door is closed with a block of snow, dragged inside and set 

 in place from within, with loose snow cementing the edges. It is not wise to 

 close up the hut too tightly, however, or the air becomes foul and suffocating. 

 In the fall of 1914, I was travelling with a Copper Eskimo across Dolphin and 

 Union Strait, and carefully closed up every chink and cranny in our first snow- 

 hut, in order to increase its warmth. Early next morning our lamp refused to 

 burn, and it was only then that we realized how impure the air was and quickly 

 broke open the door.^ 



'The owner takes his window out to pack on his sled at every migration, and his wife hands him the 

 bedding through the hole it leaves in the wall. Mr. Stefansson saw a number of deserted huts with such 

 holes in them, and his first interpretation of them as windows was as correct as his second. Thfe window 

 is naturally set above or nearly above the lamp, and as this may be on either side of the door, the 

 window may be also, not, as Mr. Stefansson thought, on one side only. Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., 

 Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 247. 



'i.e., partly ui der the surface cf the snowdrift. 



'Cf . Stefansson, My Life with the Eskimo, p. 245 et seq. 



