Secrets of Polar Travel

by Robert E. Peary

A window three feet high extended across the entire front of the main part of the house, and each sleeping-room had a window, protected by a storm-window, with an overhead sash to prolong the arctic day as long as possible. During the arctic night this sash was covered with hay. In addition to this a sky-light was built in the roof to catch the last rays of the departing sun, and during the winter it was covered with hay and a blanket of snow.

During the winter of 1894–95 my party was reduced to three members, including myself, and the winter quarters was modified to meet our requirements.

The central room was selected for our use. The partition between the kitchen and the dining-room was taken down, and a small stove set up in the middle of the forward part of the room. The stovepipe was carried out through one of the ventilator-shafts, and carefully wrapped in asbestos to prevent its burning the woodwork. The table was cut down to one-half its original size to meet our needs, and a wide bench extending the whole width of the room was built under the windows. Covered with a large bearskin, it was used as a seat in the daytime, and at night I slept on it.

The other two members of my party slept in the rear of the room. A platform was built three feet from the floor, with a distance of six feet between it and the back wall. Two cots were placed with their heads resting on the platform and their feet supported by cleats nailed to the rear wall. This arrangement is similar to the Eskimo method, giving the occupants a good circulation of air as well as lifting them out of the low temperature and drafts near the floor. These beds as well as my own were fitted with blanket curtains. Shelves were built under the bed platform and near the stove to hold our current supplies of coffee, flour, etc., and the space back of them was utilized for storage purposes.

A closet for dishes and books and another for medicines were built on the east wall of the room, while along the west side was our gun-rack, containing shot-guns, repeaters, carbines, and a Daly three-barrel gun. A clock, chronometers, barometers, barograph, etc., were hung above the gun-rack. A bird-net was suspended from the ceiling for drying out grass, which we used in the bottom of our kamiks, and three barrel-hoops were placed about the stovepipe at the top of the room for drying our stockings, kamiks, mittens, and other articles of clothing.

The walls and ceiling of the room were decorated with magazine pictures, which not only covered the cracks, but made the room brighter and more cheerful. A large ten-gallon can served as a water-tank, and a pail for our coal and a molasses-keg chair completed the furniture of our living- and sleeping-room.

In the west room we kept our furs, clothing, and part of our equipment, while the east room was used for a general storeroom and workroom. In one end of it was our coal-bin, a barrel of sugar, and one of biscuit. The room was heated by a small stove, was furnished with a table and Eskimo lamp and a wide bench covered with skins, which served as a seat for our Eskimo seamstresses, who made all our fur clothing in this room. Our sledges and tent also were constructed here, and walrus meat was cut up and packed for the sledge-trips, so that the room was usually full of happy, noisy natives.

Most of the wall surrounding the house had been emptied of supplies during the previous year, and the empty boxes and barrels used for fuel. Now we had to find a new way to protect our room from the cold. Finally we dried thoroughly all our baled hay, and filled the spaces between the inner and outer framework of the house with it. We also reinforced the wall between our living-room and the east room by a wall of hay two and a half feet in thickness from the floor clear to the ceiling, finishing it with a small vestibule with double doors. The wall between our room and the west room we packed with furs. Outside protection was secured by placing four large biscuit-casks along the side of the house under the windows of our room. Their tops came even with the window-sills, and hay was packed in the spaces between them and the house. When the snow came, everything was banked in snow three or four feet deep, a wall of snow-blocks was built along the east side of the house, a snow entrance erected, and we were snugly housed for the long winter night.

In these expeditions I gained a fairly thorough knowledge of Eskimo methods and principles of house-building, and it may not be amiss to give here my description from “Northward Over the Great Ice” of their winter igloos:

These igloos vary in size, from nine to fourteen feet in length inside, and occasionally two, more rarely three, are built close together, the party wall doing double duty and thus economizing material and labor. In plan and method of construction, each igloo is built like all the others. There is a long, low, narrow stone tunnel; a small standing room; a shallow platformed alcove on either side for meat and the stone lamps; and a large platformed alcove in the rear,—the family bed. A single small window of seal intestines over the entrance admits a little light.