idered 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 winter among them, they expressed very great, and,
doubtless, very sincere delight, and even a few _koyennas_ (thanks)
escaped them on the first communication 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 afterward found, was
only a preparation 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 regular 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 being 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 insupportable 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
places so 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 tombstones standin