Labrador is so large, and there are
so few Indians to occupy it, however, that the explorer may wander
through it for months, as I have done, without ever once seeing the
smoke rising from an Indian tepee or hearing a human voice.
The Eskimos of the north coast are much like the Eskimos of Greenland,
both in language and in the way they live. Their summer shelters are
skin tents, which they call _tupeks_. In winter they build dome-shaped
houses from blocks of snow, though they sometimes have cave-like
shelters of stone and earth built against the side of a hill. The snow
houses they call _iglooweuks_, or houses of snow; the stone and earth
shelters are _igloosoaks_, or big igloos, the word igloo, in the
Eskimo language, meaning house. When winter comes big snow drifts soon
cover the igloosoaks, and the snow keeps out the wind and cold. As a
further protection, snow tunnels, through which the people crawl on
hands and knees, are built out from the entrance to the igloosoak, and
these keep all drafts, when a gale blows, from those within.
The Eskimos heat their snow igloos, and in treeless regions their
igloosoaks also, with lamps of hollowed stone.
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