, we felt the cold severely. When our low
doorway was carefully blocked up with snow, and the cooking-lamp alight,
the temperature quickly rose, so that the walls became glazed and our
bedding thawed; but the cooking over, or the doorway partially opened, it
as quickly fell again, so that it was impossible to sleep, or even to
hold one's pannikin of tea without putting mits on, so intense was the
cold."--Sir L. McClintock is here speaking of a temperature of -39
degrees Fahr.

Materials for building Huts.--The materials whence the walls and roofs of
huts may be constructed are very numerous: there is hardly any place
which does not furnish one or other of them. Those principally in use are
as follows:--

Wattle-and-daub, to be executed neatly, required well-shaped and flexible
sticks; but a hut may be constructed much like the sketch (see p. 120) of
the way of "Drying Clothes." It is made by planting in the ground a
number of bare sticks, 4 feet long, and 1 foot apart, bending their tops
together, lashing them fast with string or strips of bark, and wattling
them judiciously here and there, by means of other boughs, laid
horizontally. Then, by heaping leaves--and especially broad pieces of
bark, if you can get them--over all, and banking up the earth on either
side, pretty high, an excellent kennel is made. If daubed over with mud,
clay, or cattle-dung, the hut becomes more secure against the weather. To
proceed a step further:--as many poles may be planted in the ground as
sticks have been employed in making the roof; and then the roof may be
lifted bodily in the air, and lashed to the top of the poles, each stick
to its corresponding pole. This sort of structure is very common among
savages.

For methods of digging holes in which to plant the hut-poles, see the
chapter on "Wells." The holes made in the way I have there explained are
far better than those dug with spades; for they disturb no more of the
hardened ground than is necessary for the insertion of the palisades. To
jam a pole tightly in its place, wedges of wood should be driven in at
its side, and earth rammed down between the wedges.

Palisades are excellent as walls or as enclosures. They are erected of
vast lengths, by savages wholly destitute of tools, both for the purposes
of fortification and also for completing lines of pitfalls across wide
valleys. the pitfalls occupy gaps left in the palisading. The savages
burn down the trees in the following m