OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 501 



For the admission of light into the huts a round hole is cut on one side of 

 the roof of each apartment, and a circular plate of ice, three or four inches 

 thick and two feet in diameter, let into it. The light is soft and pleasant 

 like that transmitted through ground glass, and is quite sufficient for every 

 purpose. When after some time these edifices become surrounded by drift, 

 it is only by the windows, as I have before remarked, that they could be 

 recognised as human habitations. It may perhaps then be imagined how 

 singular is their external appearance at night, when they discover themselves 

 only by a circular disk of light transmitted through the windows from the 

 lamps within. 



The next thing to be done is to raise a bank of snow two and a half feet 

 high, all round the interior of each apartment, except on the side next the 

 door. This bank, which is neatly squared off, forms their beds and fire-place, 

 the former occupying the sides and the latter the end opposite the door. 

 The passage left open up to the fire-place is between three and four feet 

 wide. The beds are arranged by first covering the snow with a quantity of 

 small stones, over which are laid their paddles, tent-poles, and some blades of 

 whalebone : above these they place a number of little pieces of net- work, 

 made of thin slips of whalebone, and lastly a quantity of twigs of birch * and 

 of the andromeda tetragona. Their deer-skins, which are very numerous, 

 can now be spread without risk of their touching the snow ; and such a bed is 

 capable of affording not merely comfort but luxurious repose, in spite of the 

 rigour of the climate. The skins thus used as blankets are made of a large 

 size and bordered, like some of the jackets, with a fringe of long narrow slips 

 of leather, in which state a blanket is called Jceipik. 



The fire belonging to each family consists of a single lamp, or shallow 

 vessel of lapis ollaris, its form being the lesser segment of a circle. (2.) The 

 wick, composed of dry moss rubbed between the hands till it is quite inflam- 

 mable, is disposed along the edge of the lamp on the strait side, and a greater 

 or smaller quantity lighted according to the heat required or the fuel that 

 can be afforded. When the whole length of this, which is sometimes above 

 eighteen inches, is kindled, it affords a most brilliant and beautiful light 



* This birch they said had been procured from the southward, by way of Noowook. We 

 never met with any of the same kind in those parts of the country which we visited, except 

 that observed by Captain Lyon in the deserted habitations of the Esquimaux near Five 

 Hawser-Bay, 



