If the door faces the wind, a shelter is erected outside to cut off the
wind, so that the door need not be closed. The coldest day I ever saw,
when the thermometer was seventy-one degrees below zero, the door of
our igloo was open all the time we were not asleep. A snow igloo is
made of snow-blocks about three feet long by eighteen inches wide and
five or six inches thick.
[Illustration: SECTION AND PLAN OF ESQUIMAU HUT.]
The snow-knife is simply a large thin-bladed knife, like a cheese-knife
of the grocery stores, with a handle made large enough to be
conveniently grasped with both hands. Before iron and knives became so
plentiful as at present, snow-knives were made of bone and reindeer or
musk-ox horn, but such knives are quite rare now. The Netchillik,
Ookjoolik, and Ooqueesiksillik tribes are still quite deficient in iron
weapons and implements, and many of their knives are marvels of
ingenuity. I saw several made of a little tip of iron, perhaps an inch
square, mounted on a handle two feet long, and so shaped that the iron
would do most of the cutting and scratching, and the handle acted
merely as a wedge to assist the operation. I also saw a man making a
knife by cutting a thick piece of iron with a cold chisel, afterward to
be pounded out flat and ground down on stones. The entire operation
would probably take about three or four weeks with the poor tools at
their disposal.
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