The snow was packed hard and firm, so that neither the dogs nor the komatik broke through, and the animals, fresh and eager, started at a fast pace and maintained an even, steady trot throughout the day.

Occasionally there were hills to climb, and some of these were so steep that it was necessary for Bob and the Eskimos to haul upon the traces with the dogs, and now and then they had to lift the komatik over rocky places, and on one river that they crossed they were forced to cut in several places a passage around ice hills, where the tide had piled the ice blocks thirty or forty feet high.  But for the most part the route lay over a rolling country near the coast.

Only at long intervals were trees to be seen, and these were very small and stunted, and grew in sheltered hollows.  At noon they halted in one of these hollows to build a fire, over which they melted snow in one of the kettles and made tea, with which they washed down some hardtack and jerked venison.

That night when they stopped to make their camp, sixty miles lay behind them.  The going had been good and they had done a splendid day’s work.

Before unharnessing the dogs, which would have immediately attacked and destroyed the goods upon the sledge had they been released, the Eskimos went about building an igloo.

A good bank of snow was selected and out of this Akonuk cut blocks as large as he could lift and placed them on edge in a circle about seven feet in diameter in the interior.  As each block was placed it was trimmed and fitted closely to its neighbour.  Then while Matuk cut more blocks and handed them to Akonuk as they were needed, the latter standing in the centre of the structure placed them upon edge upon the other blocks, building them up in spiral form, and narrowing in each upper round until the igloo assumed the form of a dome.  When it was nearly as high as his head, the upper tier of blocks was so close together that a single large block was sufficient to close the aperture at the top.  This block was like the keystone in an arch, and held the others firmly in place.  Akonuk now cut a round hole through the side of the igloo close to the bottom, and large enough for him to crawl through on his hands and knees.

When the Eskimos began building the snow house Bob commenced unloading the komatik, but Matuk called “Chuly, chuly,”—­wait a little—­to him, and said “tamaany,”—­here—­a suggestion that he would be more useful in helping to chink up the crevices between the blocks of snow on the igloo after Akonuk placed them This he did, and in half an hour from the time they halted the igloo was completed and was so strongly built a man could have stood on its top without fear of breaking it down.

The tops of spruce boughs were now cut and spread within, after which they unlashed the komatik, and, covering the bed of boughs with deerskins, stored everything that the dogs would be likely to destroy safely inside the igloo.  This done the dogs were unharnessed and fed, the men standing over the animals with stout sticks to prevent their fighting while they ravenously gulped down the chunks of frozen whale meat.