Dwellings 79 



inside, for there is still a gap between the end of the passage roof and the apex 

 of the front wall of the tent. When everything is entered this gap is closed 

 with a skin, which is tied or jammed in some way at the top and covered with 

 snow at the bottom. 



Such a tent is rectangular, but with rounded ends to give it more space. 

 Sometimes, however, the front is finished off square, if the family is small and 

 has little property to keep inside. The ridge-pole is often inclined so that the 

 back of the tent is higher than the front. The gaping seam along the ridge 

 can be stuffed with scraps of skin, odd mittens, hand-wipers of ptarmigan skins 

 and anything else that lies to hand. The tent itself is generally made of caribou 

 skins obtained in spring, the hair of which is long and loose and consequently 

 unfit for clothing; about fifteen are required for a single tent. It is generally 

 erected with the hair side out, as Mr. Stefansson says, but the rule is not invari- 

 able. Usually it takes about three days to sew a tent after the skins are scraped, 

 but if the woman is very industrious, she may finish it in two. In the spring 

 of 1915 a woman finished a tent in two days, while her mother-in-law was nearly 

 a week in making one but a little larger; the second woman, however, was 

 sewing other things at the same time, besides doing most of the cooking for 

 our party. Her tent was not as strong as she had hoped, for the spring skins 

 soon rotted and began to tear in several places; so in the fall, when our hunting 

 was very successful and we had plenty of serviceable skins, she put fifteen of 

 them aside to make a new tent. 



An hour is easily consumed in setting up one of these tents, with its outer 

 wall and passage of snow. They are very comfortable, however, and rather 

 more spacious than the ordinary snow-hut. The doorway is the same as in 

 a snow-hut, an oval gap in the snow, on a level with the bottom tier of blocks 

 or sometimes a little lower, the snow-blocks for the passage walls being taken 

 out of the floor. In stormy weather a wind-break of snow is often built along 

 one side of the tent. As a rule there is no need of a window, for the days are 

 long in spring and the obscurity inside the tent is rather a relief from the dazzling 

 glare outside; occasionally, however, the passage is slightly enlarged at the side 

 of the door and a window of ice inserted in the side. On April 15th, 1915, a 

 tent in which the flame of the lamp extended about 18 inches gave a temperature 

 of 43° F. at the front of the sleeping-platform, though the thermometer outside 

 stood at zero. In the late spring, and also in the fall, when the snow is shallow 

 or melting, a patch of bare ground is chosen for the camping-site and the edges 

 of the tent are held down with large stones; a passage is impossible in such 

 cases. 



The interior arrangements of the spring tent are the same as in the snow- 

 hut. When erected over a floor of snow it has a sleeping-platform, table and 

 lamp exactly like the hut. On bare ground a platform is impracticable, but 

 the bedding is arranged in the same way, though on a level with the floor. If 

 the family still have a lamp and blubber they set it on the ground in the usual 

 place, and arrange the cooking pot above it on two stones, one on each corner 

 of the lamp. In most places, however, by the time the snow has melted there 

 is plenty of other fuel available, willow or heather or the Dryas octopetala, and 

 the stone lamp is cached away until the fall. In fine weather cooking takes 

 place out of doors, but whenever it is cold or windy a hearth is made just inside 

 the doorway. The smoke soon fills the tent and slowly drifts out of the entrance ; 

 if it becomes unendurable the flap in the rear of the tent is raised a little, and 

 the current of air that pours in drives the smoke through the doorway. 



Another kind of tent is occasionally seen, a conical tent like the Indian tipi. 

 Unlike the tipi, however, the skin covering reaches to the very top of the cone, 

 for the blubber lamp, if properly trimmed, gives out hardly any smoke and a 

 venthole is unnecessary. This tent, like the rectangular one, can be raisec| 

 on snow-blocks and furnished with a passage; one that I saw in Coronation 



