sh
skin or thin paper over lattices. Some windows were closed with mats
that could be rolled up or lowered at will.

The fire-place has a deep pan or kettle fixed over it, and there is
room for a pot suspended from a rafter. Around the room is a divan, or
low bench of boards or wicker work, serving as a sofa by day and a bed
at night. When dogs are kept in the house a portion of the divan
belongs to them, and among the Mangoons there is a table in the center
specially reserved for feeding the dogs.

I found the floors of clay, smooth and hard. Near the fire-place a
little fire of charcoal is kept constantly burning in a shallow hole.
Pipes are lighted at this fire, and small things can be warmed over
it. Household articles were hung upon the rafters and cross beams, and
there was generally a closet for table ware and other valuables. The
cross-beams were sufficiently close to afford stowage room for
considerable property. Fish-nets, sledges, and canoes were the most
bulky articles I saw there.

Part of one wall was reserved for religious purposes, and covered with
bear-skulls and bones, horse-hair, wooden idols, and pieces of colored
cloth. Occasionally there were badly-painted pictures, purchased from
the Chinese at enormous prices. Sometimes poles shaped like small
idols are fixed before the houses.

A Goldee house is warmed by means of wooden pipes under the divan and
passing out under ground to a chimney ten or fifteen feet from the
building. Great economy is shown in using fuel and great care against
conflagrations. I was not able to stand erect in any Goldee houses I
entered.

Like all people of the Mongolian race, the natives pretended to have
little curiosity. When we landed at their villages many continued
their occupations and paid no attention to strangers. Above Gorin a
Goldee gentleman took me into his house, where a woman placed a mat on
the divan and motioned me to a seat. The man tendered me a piece of
dried fish, which I ate out of courtesy to my hosts. Several children
gathered to look at me, but retired on a gesture from _pater
familias_. I am not able to say if the fact that my eyes were
attracted to a pretty girl of seventeen had anything to do with the
dispersal of the group. Curiosity dwells in Mongol breasts, but the
Asiatics, like our Indians, consider its exhibition in bad taste.

Outside this man's house there were many scaffoldings for drying fish.
A tame eagle was fastened with a lon