358 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



we considered at the time as some confirmation of our own surmises respecting 

 the badness of the past summer. When we told them we were come to win- 

 ter among them, they expressed very great and doubtless very sincere de- 

 light, and even a few coyennas (thanks) escaped them on the first communica- 

 tion of this piece of intelligence. 



We found these people already established in their winter residences, 

 which consisted principally of the huts before described, but modified in 

 various ways both as to form and materials. The roofs, which were wholly 

 wanting in the summer, were now formed by skins stretched tight across from 

 side to side. This, however, as we soon afterwards found, was only a prepara- 

 tion for the final winter covering of snow, and indeed many of the huts were 

 subsequently lined in the same way within, the skins being attached to the 

 sides and roof by slender threads of whalebone, disposed in large and re- 

 gular stitches. Before the passages already described, others were now 

 added from ten to fifteen feet in length, and from four to five feet high, 

 neatly constructed of large flat slabs of ice cemented together by snow and 

 water. Some huts also were entirely built of this material, of a rude circular 

 or octangular form, and roofed with skins like the others. The light and 

 transparent effect within these singular habitations gave one the idea of be- 

 ing in a house of ground-glass, and their newness made them look clean, 

 comfortable, and wholesome. Not so the more substantial bone huts, which, 

 from their extreme closeness and accumulated filth, emitted an almost insup- 

 portable stench, to which an abundant supply of raw and half-putrid walrus 

 flesh in no small degree contributed. The passages to these are so low as to 

 make it necessary to crawl on the hands and knees to enter them ; and the 

 floors of the apartments were in some so steep and slippery, that we could 

 with difficulty pass and repass, without the risk of continually falling among 

 the filth with which they were covered. These were the dirtiest because the 

 most durable of any Esquimaux habitations we had yet seen, and it may be 

 supposed they did not much improve during the winter. Some bitches with 

 young were very carefully and conveniently lodged in small square kennels, 

 made of four upright slabs of ice covered with a fifth, and having a small 

 hole as a door in one of the sides. The canoes were also laid upon two 

 slabs of this kind, like tall tomb-stones standing erect; and a quantity of 

 spare slabs lying in different places gave the ground an appearance somewhat 

 resembling that of a statuary's yard. Large stores of walrus' and seals' 

 flesh, principally the former, were deposited under heaps of stones all about 



