40 
THE DWELLNGS. 
drift-wood or whalebones, and then roofed in with 
earth, skins, mosses, and hroken-up kayack frames. 
One small aperture of eighteen inches square, cover- 
ed with the scraped intestines of the seal, forms the 
window ; and a long, tunnel-like entry, opening to the 
south, and not exceeding three feet in height, leads 
to a skin-covered door. Inside, perched upon an ele- 
vated dais or stall, with an earthen lamp to establish 
the "focus," several families reside together. I have 
seen as many as four in an apartment of sixteen feet 
square. 
Some of these huts were garnished with little tin- 
seled pictures, and looked as if their inmates were not 
insensible to the decorative vanities of other lands. 
Others were a very caricature of discomfort — mouldy, 
dank, and fetid ; their rude ceilings distilling filthy 
water, and sometimes covered with introverted grasses 
[poa Danica), which had originally formed part of the 
outer thatching, but now intruded upon the greater 
warmth of the interior. 
I had but a few hours to examine this group. It 
evidently belongs to that class of rocky islets known 
to the Danes as "skerries," skiers, which are the not 
unfrequent appendages of a primary coast ridge. 
Well-defined gneiss, with intersecting veins of coarse 
red feldspar, was the basis material, the quartzine ele- 
ment greatly predominating. From several rude sec- 
tions, I made the dip of the strata to the northeast to 
be at an angle of 25° or 30°. 
