The houses of the natives are much the same in all the divisions of Alaska. These dwellings are thus described: ‘A circular mound of earth, grass-grown and littered with all sorts of household utensils, a small spiral coil of smoke rising from the apex, dogs crouching, children climbing up or rolling down, stray morsels of food left from one meal to the other, and a soft mixture of mud and offal surrounding it all. The entrance to this house is a low irregular square aperture, through which the inmate stoops, and passes down a foot or two through a short low passage on to the earthen floor within. The interior generally consists of an irregularly shaped square or circle, twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, receiving its only light from without, through the small smoke-opening at the apex of the roof, which rises, tent-like, from the floor. The fireplace is directly under this opening. Rude beds or couches of skin and grass mats are laid, slightly raised above the floor, upon clumsy frames made of sticks and saplings or rough-hewn planks, and sometimes on little elevations built up of peat or sod. Sometimes a small hall-way with bulging sides is erected over the entrance, where, by this expansion, room is afforded for the keeping of utensils and water-vessels and as a shelter for dogs. Immediately adjoining most of these houses will be found a small summer kitchen, a rude wooden frame, walled in and covered over with sods, with an opening at the top to give vent to the smoke. These are entirely above ground, rarely over five or six feet in diameter, and are littered with filth and offal of all kinds; serving also as a refuge for the dogs from the inclement weather. In the interior regions, where both fuel and building material are more abundant, the houses change somewhat in appearance and construction; the excavation of the coast-houses, made for the purpose of saving both, disappears, and gives way to log-structures above the ground, but still covered with sods. Living within convenient distance of timber, the people (inland) do not depend so much upon the natural warmth of mother-earth.’