[Footnote N155: Grønlandsk Ordbog, p. 404; Kane’s 1st Grinnell Exp., p. 40, calls it a “skin-covered door.” Compare, also, the skin or matting hung over the entrance of the houses at Norton Sound, Dall, Alaska, p. 13, and the bear-skin doors of the Nunatañmiun and other Kotzebue Sound natives, mentioned by Dr. Simpson, op. cit., p. 259.] [Footnote N156: Compare Dr. Simpson’s description, op. cit., p. 259.] [Illustration: FIG. 14.--Ground plan of large snow house.] At the hunting grounds, or on the road thither in the winter, a place is selected for the house where the snow is deeply drifted under the edge of some bank, so that most of the house can be made by excavation. When necessary, the walls are built up and roofed over with slabs of snow. Such a house is very speedily built. The first party that goes over the road to the hunting ground usually builds houses at the end of each day’s march, and these serve for the parties coming later, who have simply to clear out the drifted snow or perhaps make some slight repairs. On arriving at the hunting ground they establish themselves in larger and more comfortable houses of the same sort; generally for two families. Lieut. Ray, who visited these camps, has drawn the plan represented in Fig. 14. There is a banquette, _a_, at each end of the room, which is much broader than long (compare the form of house common at Kotzebue Sound, mentioned above, p. 78), but only one lamp, on a low shelf of snow, _b_, running across the back of the room and excavated below into a sort of cupboard. There are also similar cupboards, _c_, at different places in the walls, and a long tunnel, _f_, with the usual storerooms, _i_, and kitchen, _h_, from which a branch tunnel often leads to an adjoining house. The floor is marked _d_, the entrance to the tunnel _g_, and the door _e_. The house is lighted by the seal-gut windows of the iglu brought from the village. On going into camp the railed sled is stuck points down into the snow and net-poles, or ice-picks, thrust through the rails, making a temporary cache frame,[N157] on which are hung bulky articles-- snowshoes and guns.[N158] Small storehouses of snow or ice are built to contain provisions. In the autumn, many such houses are built in the village, of slabs of clear fresh-water ice about 4 inches thick cemented together by freezing. These resemble the buildings of fresh-water ice at Iglulik, described by Capt. Lyon.[N159] [Footnote N157: Compare the woodcut on p. 406, vol. 1, of Kane’s 2d Exp., where two sleds are represented as stuck up on end with their “upstanders” meeting to form a platform--Smith Sound.] [Footnote N158: Firearms can not be carried into a warm room in cold weather, as the moisture in the air immediately condenses on the cold surface of the metal.] [Footnote N159: Journal, p. 204; see also the plate opposite p. 358 of Parry’s 2d Voyage.]