The pole of the tent is fixed where the bed
commences, and the latter is kept separate by some pieces of bone
laid across the tent from side to side. The door, which faces the
southwest, is also formed of two pieces of bone, with the upper
ends fastened together, and the skins are made to overlap in that
part of the tent, which is much lower than the inner end. The
covering is fastened to the ground by curved pieces of bone, being
generally parts of the whale; the tents were ten or fifteen yards
apart, and about the same distance from the beach.
The canoe which I purchased, and which was one of the best of the
five that we saw, is sixteen feet eleven inches in length, and its
extreme breadth two feet one inch and a half; two feet of its fore
end are out of the water when floating. It differs from the canoe
of Greenland in being somewhat lower at each end, and also in
having a higher rim or gunwale, as it may be termed, round the
circular hole where the man sits, which may make them somewhat
safer at sea. Their construction is, in other respects, much the
same; the timbers or ribs, which are five or six inches apart, as
well as the fore and aft connecting pieces, being of whalebone or
drift-wood, and the skins with which they were covered, those of
the seal and walrus.
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