Inside of this dome there was one large, circular room. In most Esquimaux houses this was reception-room, dining-room, bed-room, and kitchen, all in one. But a few very elegant dwellings, and, among them Loonerkoo’s, had curtains of skins hung up so as to make a couple of bed-rooms.
It may make you shiver when I tell you how they made their bedsteads. These were blocks of snow, making a platform a couple of feet high, and five and six feet long. On them whalebones and seal skins were laid for mattresses. The coverlets consisted of nice, warm furs.
Exactly in the middle of the large room a circular platform was made with blocks of snow. On this stood the lamp for cooking purposes, and over it was a wooden scaffolding on which the cooking utensils were hung.
The lamp was nothing but a dish, filled with whale oil and blubber, with a long wick of dry moss.
Around the walls the weapons and clothes of the family were hung.
This was all the furniture the house contained, and it was quite enough for these simple people. Warm clothing, plenty to eat, and comfortable places to sleep were all they required.
It is difficult for us to believe that these snow houses are comfortable, but they are very warm indeed; or, rather, I should say they are the warmest houses that could be made for the very severe climate of Greenland. The Esquimaux is hardened to the cold, and can bear it much better than we can. He wraps himself up in his furs, and lays down on his icy couch, and sleeps as peacefully and comfortably as we do on our soft mattresses.
It only required a few hours to build the winter house of Loonerkoo, and to put it into perfect order.
A still shorter time sufficed for constructing his summer residence, which was nothing more than a large tent, made of dressed skins.
The Arctic summer is short. It really lasts only about six weeks. For, after the worst of the wintry weather is over, it takes the sun a good while to melt the heavy masses of snow and ice, and to send them floating down the rivers and bays, and out into the ocean, where they finally disappear. This season is scarcely warm enough to call Spring; it is, more properly, the breaking up of Winter. It is a time when icebergs abound, and boating is a very dangerous amusement.