Dwellings 



73 



in the corner where she could superintend the lamp and the cooking, and 

 between her and her husband was their little (3hild, whenever there was one. 

 The family that lived by itself left the settlement before the rest, so the others 

 closed up the front of the empty room with snow-blocks to make their house 

 smaller and warmer (Fig. 23). 



Fig. 22. A two-roomed dwelling joined to a single-roomed hut through the passage 



A curious four-roomed dwelling and dance-house was seen at the Listen and 

 Sutton islands in December, 1915. I was not present when it was made and 

 therefore cannot say whether the different rooms were erected at the same time 

 or not. Architecturally two of the rooms must be regarded as excrescences, 

 their only connection with the rest being that their doorways led into the dance- 

 house instead of into a corridor. The dance-house formed the forecourt of the 

 other two rooms, one of which was inhabited by two families not very closely 

 related. Each family, as usual, had its own lamp and furniture, and the places 

 in which the various inmates slept followed the usual custom. The winter 

 that year was very stormy, and both food and blubber were scarce, so that'the 

 lamps had to be extinguished in many houses. The two rooms at the back 

 of the dance-house were soon abandoned, as they were cold and uncomfortable 

 unless the lamps were burning full. The other two families were better off 

 as they could bar their doors and make their rooms almost airtight; they there- 

 fore remained where they were till February, when the whole settlement migrated 

 some ten miles farther west (Fig. 24). 



