The consideration of the question whence the Siberians acquired this peculiar method of smoking would lead me beyond the bounds of the present work, but I can not leave the subject of pipes without calling attention to the fact that Nordenskiöld[N122] has alluded to the resemblance of these to the Japanese pipes. A gentleman who has spent many years in China also informs me that the Chinese pipes are of a very similar type and smoked in much the same way.[N123] The Greenlanders and eastern Eskimo generally, who have learned the use of tobacco directly from the Europeans, use large-bowled pipes, which they smoke in the ordinary manner. In talking with us the people of Point Barrow call tobacco “tiba´” or “tibakĭ,” but among themselves it is still known as ta´wak, which is the word found in use among them by the earliest explorers.[N124] “Tiba” was evidently learned from the American whalers, as it was not in use in Dr. Simpson’s time. It is merely an attempt to pronounce the word tobacco, but has been adopted into the Eskimo language sufficiently to be used as the radical in compound words such as “tiba´xutikă´ktûñɐ,” “I have a supply of tobacco.” There is no evidence that anything else was smoked before the introduction of tobacco, and no pipes seen or collected appear older than the time when we know them to have had tobacco.[N125] [Footnote N122: Vega, vol. 2, p. 116.] [Footnote N123: See also Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. xxix.] [Footnote N124: See Beechey, Voyage, p. 323; T. Simpson, Narrative, p. 156--“tobacco, which * * * they call tawāc, or tawākh, a name acquired of course from Russian traders;” Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 239; also Maguire and J. Simpson, loc. cit. passim. Petitot calls ta´wak “mot français corrompu”!] [Footnote N125: Since the above was written, the word for pipe, “kuinyɐ,” has been found to be of Siberian origin. See the writer’s article “On the Siberian origin of some customs of the Western Eskimos” (American Anthropologist, vol. 1, pp. 325-336).] HABITATIONS. _The winter house_ (_ĭ´glu_).--The permanent winter houses are built of wood[N126] and thickly covered with clods of earth. Each house consists of a single room, nearly square, entered by an underground passage about 25 feet long and 4 to 4½ feet high. The sloping mound of earth which covers the house, grading off insensibly to the level of the ground, gives the houses the appearance of being underground, especially as the land on which they stand is irregular and hilly. Without very careful measurements, which we were unable to make, it is impossible to tell whether the floor is above or below the surface of the ground. It is certainly not very far either way. I am inclined to think that a space at or near the top of a hillock is simply leveled to receive the floor. In this case the back of the house on a hill side, like some in Utkiavwĭñ, would be underground.