mocassins, after which the sledges were packed, and another day’s march commenced.  In these little huts we usually slept warm enough, although latterly, when our blankets and clothes became loaded with ice, we felt the cold severely.  When our low doorway was carefully blocked up with snow, and the cooking-lamp alight, the temperature quickly rose, so that the walls became glazed and our bedding thawed; but the cooking over, or the doorway partially opened, it as quickly fell again, so that it was impossible to sleep, or even to hold one’s pannikin of tea without putting mits on, so intense was the cold.”—­Sir L. McClintock is here speaking of a temperature of -39 degrees Fahr.

Materials for building Huts.—­The materials whence the walls and roofs of huts may be constructed are very numerous:  there is hardly any place which does not furnish one or other of them.  Those principally in use are as follows:—­

Wattle-and-daub, to be executed neatly, required well-shaped and flexible sticks; but a hut may be constructed much like the sketch (see p. 120) of the way of “Drying Clothes.”  It is made by planting in the ground a number of bare sticks, 4 feet long, and 1 foot apart, bending their tops together, lashing them fast with string or strips of bark, and wattling them judiciously here and there, by means of other boughs, laid horizontally.  Then, by heaping leaves—­and especially broad pieces of bark, if you can get them—­over all, and banking up the earth on either side, pretty high, an excellent kennel is made.  If daubed over with mud, clay, or cattle-dung, the hut becomes more secure against the weather.  To proceed a step further:—­as many poles may be planted in the ground as sticks have been employed in making the roof; and then the roof may be lifted bodily in the air, and lashed to the top of the poles, each stick to its corresponding pole.  This sort of structure is very common among savages.

For methods of digging holes in which to plant the hut-poles, see the chapter on “Wells.”  The holes made in the way I have there explained are far better than those dug with spades; for they disturb no more of the hardened ground than is necessary for the insertion of the palisades.  To jam a pole tightly in its place, wedges of wood should be driven in at its side, and earth rammed down between the wedges.

Palisades are excellent as walls or as enclosures.  They are erected of vast lengths, by savages wholly destitute of tools, both for the purposes of fortification and also for completing lines of pitfalls across wide valleys. the pitfalls occupy gaps left in the palisading.  The savages burn down the trees in the following manner:—­a party of men go to the forest, and light small fires round the roots of the trees they propose to fell. the fires are prevented from flaming upwards by the judicious application of leaves, etc.  When the fire has eaten a little way into the tree, the man who watches it scrapes the fire aside and knocks