COMPLETE POLAR WINTER HOUSE
Before banking in with snow
A SCENE AT HUBBARDVILLE 82° 30´ N. LAT.
One of the box houses in winter
The interior was twenty-one feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet high, and was divided into two rooms. A wall was constructed all the way around the house, leaving a passageway of four feet between. For the lower portion of this wall, empty barrels, stones, and turf were used, while wooden boxes containing canned supplies, piled in regular courses on top of this foundation, formed the upper portion of the wall. I had the supply boxes made the same width and depth, but of different lengths, specially for this purpose. A roof of canvas extending from the house to the wall made a closed-in corridor, which we used as a storeroom. The boxes were stacked so that the covers could be opened from the inside, making their contents as easily accessible as if they were on pantry-shelves. This corridor was quite large enough to serve as a workroom, and here we made our sledges and other equipment necessary for sledge-journeys. When the snow came, a long snow entrance to the corridor was constructed; the roof was covered with a thick blanket of it, and the walls were banked, still further to protect us from the wintry blasts.
For our stove a pit was dug in the ground, so that the fire-box came below the level of the floor, thus insuring the warmth of air even down to the floor level, and lessening the danger of fire. To carry the stovepipe out so that it would not come into contact with the woodwork, we ran it through a double window the glass of which had been replaced with sheets of tin. Air-shafts were suitably arranged for carrying off moisture and bad air.
This done, heavy Indian blankets of bright red, adding warmth and color to the interior, were used to cover the walls and ceiling; bunks were built along the wall; and with a few chairs and a table, a library, and our cooking-utensils, our home was ready for occupancy.
My expedition of 1893–95 had its headquarters at the head of Bowdoin Bay a few miles north of Red Cliff. Our home here was to accommodate a party of fourteen, just twice as many as were housed at Red Cliff, and consequently had to be made much larger than our first winter home. Anniversary Lodge, as this later came to be called, was built on the same general plan as Red Cliff House, with an inner air-tight shell separated from an outer air-tight shell by an air space from one to three feet in width. The roof was almost flat, and a closed-in corridor ranging from four to six feet in width, and with a nearly flat roof, surrounded the whole building. The outer wall of this was likewise made of boxes filled with supplies, and a covering of snow was used to protect it from winter weather. The floor was double, tongued and grooved, and lined with tarred paper. The inner and outer sheathing were also tongued and grooved, the former lined with blankets and felt, the latter covered inside and outside with tarred paper. The outer joints were covered with battens.
The house was divided into four rooms, the central part of it, fourteen feet long, nine feet wide, and eight feet high being partitioned off to serve as kitchen and dining-room while two end rooms opening from it were used for sleeping-quarters.