The snow-knife is simply a large thin-bladed knife, like a cheese-knife of the grocery stores, with a handle made large enough to be conveniently grasped with both hands. Before iron and knives became so plentiful as at present, snow-knives were made of bone and reindeer or musk-ox horn, but such knives are quite rare now. The Netchillik, Ookjoolik, and Ooqueesiksillik tribes are still quite deficient in iron weapons and implements, and many of their knives are marvels of ingenuity. I saw several made of a little tip of iron, perhaps an inch square, mounted on a handle two feet long, and so shaped that the iron would do most of the cutting and scratching, and the handle acted merely as a wedge to assist the operation. I also saw a man making a knife by cutting a thick piece of iron with a cold chisel, afterward to be pounded out flat and ground down on stones. The entire operation would probably take about three or four weeks with the poor tools at their disposal. The builder selects snow of the proper consistency by sounding a drift with a cane, made for the purpose, of reindeer horn, straightened by steaming, and worked down until about half an inch in diameter, with a ferule of walrus tusk or the tooth of a bear on the bottom. By thrusting this into the snow he can tell whether the layers deposited by successive winds are separated by bands of soft snow, which would cause the blocks to break. When the snow is selected, he digs a pit to the depth of eighteen inches or two feet, and about the length of the snow-block. He then steps down into the pit and proceeds to cut out the blocks by first cutting down at the ends of the pit, and then the bottom afterward, cutting a little channel about an inch or two deep, marking the thickness of the proposed block.