These winter houses can only be occupied when the weather is cold enough to keep the ground hard frozen. During the summer the passageways are full of water, which freezes at the beginning of winter and is dug out with a pickax. The people of Utkiavwĭñ began to come to us to borrow our pickax to clean out their iglus about September 24, 1882, and all the houses were vacated before July 1, both seasons. This particular form of winter house, though in general like those built by other Eskimo, nevertheless differs in many respects from any described elsewhere. For instance, the Greenland house was an oblong flat-roofed building of turf and stones, with the passageway in the middle of one side instead of one end, and not underground. Still, the door and windows were all on one side, and the banquette or “brix” only on the side opposite the entrance. The windows were formerly made of seal entrails, and the passage, though not underground, was still lower than the floor of the house, so that it was necessary to step up at each end.[N132] [Footnote N132: Egede, Greenland, p. 114; Crantz, History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 139; Rink, Tales and Traditions, p. 7.] A detailed description of the peculiar communal house of the East Greenlanders, of which, there is only one at each village, will be found in Capt. Holm’s paper in the Geografisk Tidskrift, vol. 8, pp. 87-89. This is the long house of West Greenland, still further elongated till it will accommodate “half a score of families, that is to say, 30 to 50 people.” John Davis (1586) describes the houses of the Greenlanders “neere the Sea side,” which were made with pieces of wood on both sides, and crossed over with poles and then covered over with earth.[N133] [Footnote N133: Hakluyt, Voyages, etc. (1589), p. 788.] [Illustration: FIG. 13.--Ground plan and section of winter house in Mackenzie region.] At Iglulik the permanent houses were dome shaped, built of bones, with the interstices filled with turf, and had a short, low passage.[N134] No other descriptions of permanent houses are to be found until we reach the people of the Mackenzie region, who build houses of timbers, of rather a peculiar pattern, covered with turf, made in the form of a cross, of which three or all four of the arms are the sleeping rooms, the floor being raised into a low banquette.[N135] (See Fig. 13.) Petitot[N136] gives a very excellent detailed description of the houses of the Anderson River people. According to his account the passageway is built up of blocks of ice. He mentions one house with a single alcove like those at Point Barrow.[N137] [Footnote N134: Lyon, Journal, p. 171.] [Footnote N135: See Fig. 13, ground plan and section, copied from Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. XXIII.] [Footnote N136: Monographie, etc., p. XXI.]