98 
a stone cooking pot suspended above it. Behind the lamp are some 
bags containing meat and blubber; in front of it, a wooden table 
bearing, perhaps, a knife and a ladle. A low platform covered with 
skins occupies fully half the floor space; there, side by side, with 
their heads facing the door, the inmates sleep in bags or robes of 
caribou fur. If you stand at the edge of this platform, exactly in 
the centre of the hut, you can place both hands on the ceiling and 
almost touch the wall on either side. A thermometer, three feet 
from the lamp, will register one or two degrees below the freezing 
point of water, quite a comfortable temperature if you are enveloped, 
like the Eskimo, in soft, warm garments of caribou fur. Only your 
feet become slowly chilled on the snow floor, unless you find a seat 
on the sleeping platform and draw them up into safety. 
37018 
An Eskimo stiow-liut with a window of ice. The owner’s poles and harpoons are 
planted in the Avails, and his sled upturned and raised on siioaa" blocks, faces the 
entrance. (Photo hi/ I). JennesH.) 
The snow hut is essentially the product of a treeless zone where 
the unbroken force of the wind so compacts the surface of the snow 
that it can be carved into building blocks. For many centuries it 
has been the ordinary winter dwelling of all the Eskimo tribes of 
the Dominion east of the Mackenzie delta, the stone huts 
mentioned a little earlier in this chapter standing deserted and in 
ruins. In the delta itself, and in Alaska, driftwood was generally 
so plentiful along the coast that the Eskimo could build underground 
