Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/497

Rh in about half an hour; one man cuts the blocks, another builds, and the other two carry the blocks and fill up chinks, etc.

Building a hut with a large party, however, is a different matter, the difficulty in constructing the dome greatly increasing as its diameter is enlarged. It then becomes a question whether it would not be more advisable to build two huts, and to divide the tent-robes etc. between them, or to build four walls inclosing a space of about six and a half feet wide, and long enough to accommodate the whole party (fourteen inches being the allotted space of each man). The tent is then used as a roof, by being laid over the walls, and snow thrown on it to prevent the wind blowing it off. The walls should incline inward slightly, and be about five feet high, and the floor excavated to a foot or so to give additional height inside. The advantages a snow hut has over a tent-roofed house is, that should the temperature become high, the moisture overhead runs down the walls in the former, whereas in the latter it drips, and makes the tent so wet that when it freezes again it is almost impossible to spread it. The snow hut which Englishmen should construct (that is, without the aid of the Esquimaux) is made of slabs of caked snow about two feet long, one wide, and six inches thick. The site (a circle) is first marked out on the snow, and beginning with a very narrow slab, inclining slightly inward, the building is commenced and continued spirally, until at a height of about five feet, when a single rounded slab is cut, closing up the centre of the dome. The entrance is as low as possible, and is cut the last thing by the man inside. When the temperature is low it will be found preferable to encamp on snow rather than on land, and still warmer upon ice when there is water underneath, which will materially add to the warmth and comfort of the encampment.

While dragging the sledges it is very necessary to keep continually changing the leading men on the drag-ropes, as on them rests the severe task of exerting their eyes in order to pick their road, and they are therefore more subject to snow-blindness than the others. The officer, when not engaged in dragging the sledge, should be very particular in selecting a good and easy line of country; this is of the utmost importance.

We will now suppose that the season for sledge-traveling has passed, the sun no longer sinks below the horizon, the object for which the sledge-parties have been striving has been gained, and they have all returned to their ship, which they left three months before frozen up in the solitude of their winter quarters. Some, which have returned early, after taking out depots for the extended parties, have since been actively engaged on regularly-organized shooting-excursions. But all are back by July. They return to a busy scene. Active preparations are being made to get the ship ready for sea. The housing is taken down and stowed away below, and it is to be hoped will not again be seen, as rumor whispers they are homeward bound;