beauty of the scene on our arrival. The sky was lighted up with the
most beautiful aurora I have yet seen in these regions. Stars spangled
the sky in millions. Great ice-bergs rose in wild confusion in the
distance, and all along the shore for a few hundred yards were clusters
of snow-huts. They looked exactly like bee-hives. I have seen many a
strange house, but the strangest of all is certainly a house of snow!
To-day I was fortunate enough to see one built. It was done very
neatly. The hard snow was cut into slabs with a wooden knife. These
were piled one above another in regular order, and cemented with snow--
as bricks are with lime. The form of the wall was circular, and the
slabs were so shaped that they sloped inwards, thus forming a dome, or
large bee-hive, with a key-stone slab in the top to keep all firm. A
hole was then cut in the side for a door--just large enough to admit of
a man creeping through. In front of this door a porch or passage of
snow was built. The only way of getting into the hut is by creeping on
hands and knees along the passage. A hole was also cut in the roof,
into which was inserted a piece of clear ice, to serve for a window.

"The natives received us with wild surprise, and I found my old friends,
the walrus-hunters, among them. They were remarkably friendly. One
stout, middle-aged fellow invited us to his hut. I am now seated in it
beside the Eskimo's wife, who would be a good-looking woman if she were
not so fat, dirty, and oily! But we cannot expect people living in this
fashion, and in such a country, to be very clean. Although the hut is
white outside, it is by no means white inside. They cook all their food
over an oil-lamp, which also serves to heat the place; and it is
wonderful how warm a house of snow becomes. The cold outside is so
great as to prevent the walls melting inside. Besides Myouk, our host,
and his wife, there are two of the man's sisters, two lads, two girls,
and a baby in the hut. Also six dogs. The whole of them--men, women,
children, and dogs, are as fat as they can be, for they have been
successful in walrus-hunting of late. No wonder that the perspiration
is running down my face! The natives feel the heat, too, for they are
all half-naked--the baby entirely so; but they seem to like it!

"What a chattering, to be sure! I am trying to take notes, and Myouk's
wife is staring at me with her mouth wide open. It is a wonder she can
ope