serve as pantries. The inner tent
is warmed by three train-oil lamps, which together with the heat
given off by the numerous human beings packed together in the tent,
raise the temperature to such a height that the inhabitants even
during the severest winter cold may be completely naked. The work of
the women and the cooking are carried on in winter in this
tent-chamber, very often also the calls of nature are obeyed in it.
All this conduces to make the atmosphere prevailing there
unendurable. There are also, however, cleanlier families, in whose
sleeping chamber the air is not so disgusting.

In summer they live during the day, and cook and work, in the outer
tent. This consists of seal and walrus skins sewed together, which
however are generally so old, hairless, and full of holes, that they
appear to have been used by several generations. The skins of the
outer tent are stretched over wooden ribs, which are carefully bound
together by thongs of skin. The ribs rest partly on posts, partly on
tripods of driftwood. The posts are driven into the ground, and the
tripods get the necessary steadiness by a heavy stone or a seal-skin
sack filled with sand being suspended from the middle of them.
In order further to steady the tent a yet heavier stone is in the
same way suspended by a strap from the top of the tent-roof, or the
summit of the roof is made fast to the ground by thick thongs.
At one place a tackle from a wrecked vessel was used for this purpose,
being tightened with a block between the top of the roof and an
iron hook frozen into the ground. The ribs in every tent are besides
supported by T-formed cross stays.

The entrance consists of a low door, which, when necessary, may be
closed with a reindeer skin. The floor of the outer tent consists of
the bare ground. This is kept very clean, and the few household
articles are hung up carefully and in an orderly manner along the
walls on the inner and outer sides of the tent. Near the tent are
some posts, as high as a man, driven into the ground, with cross
pieces on which skin boats, oars, javelins, &c., are laid, and from
which fishing and seal nets are suspended.

In the neighbourhood of the dwellings the storehouse is placed. It
consists of a cellar excavated at some suitable place. The sites of
old Onkilon dwellings are often used for this purpose. The descent
is commonly covered with pieces of driftwood which are loaded with
stones, at one place the door, or