The dwellings are from fifteen to forty feet square, according to the size of the family.  In one I found a grandfather and his descendants; thirty persons at least.  There are usually two windows, made of fish skin or thin paper over lattices.  Some windows were closed with mats that could be rolled up or lowered at will.

The fire-place has a deep pan or kettle fixed over it, and there is room for a pot suspended from a rafter.  Around the room is a divan, or low bench of boards or wicker work, serving as a sofa by day and a bed at night.  When dogs are kept in the house a portion of the divan belongs to them, and among the Mangoons there is a table in the center specially reserved for feeding the dogs.

I found the floors of clay, smooth and hard.  Near the fire-place a little fire of charcoal is kept constantly burning in a shallow hole.  Pipes are lighted at this fire, and small things can be warmed over it.  Household articles were hung upon the rafters and cross beams, and there was generally a closet for table ware and other valuables.  The cross-beams were sufficiently close to afford stowage room for considerable property.  Fish-nets, sledges, and canoes were the most bulky articles I saw there.

Part of one wall was reserved for religious purposes, and covered with bear-skulls and bones, horse-hair, wooden idols, and pieces of colored cloth.  Occasionally there were badly-painted pictures, purchased from the Chinese at enormous prices.  Sometimes poles shaped like small idols are fixed before the houses.

A Goldee house is warmed by means of wooden pipes under the divan and passing out under ground to a chimney ten or fifteen feet from the building.  Great economy is shown in using fuel and great care against conflagrations.  I was not able to stand erect in any Goldee houses I entered.

Like all people of the Mongolian race, the natives pretended to have little curiosity.  When we landed at their villages many continued their occupations and paid no attention to strangers.  Above Gorin a Goldee gentleman took me into his house, where a woman placed a mat on the divan and motioned me to a seat.  The man tendered me a piece of dried fish, which I ate out of courtesy to my hosts.  Several children gathered to look at me, but retired on a gesture from pater familias.  I am not able to say if the fact that my eyes were attracted to a pretty girl of seventeen had anything to do with the dispersal of the group.  Curiosity dwells in Mongol breasts, but the Asiatics, like our Indians, consider its exhibition in bad taste.

Outside this man’s house there were many scaffoldings for drying fish.  A tame eagle was fastened with a long chain to one of the scaffolds; he was supposed to keep other birds away and was a pet of his owner.  There were many dogs walking or lying around loose, while others were tied to the posts that supported the scaffolds.

The dogs of the Goldees are very intelligent.  One morning Mr. Maack missed his pots which he had left the night before full of meat.  After some search they were found in the woods near the village, overturned and empty.  Several dogs were prowling about and had evidently committed the theft.  Fearing to be interrupted at their meal they carried the pots where they could eat at leisure.