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resting places and on one side the entrance, whereas in
Greenland the resting places or family benches are all arranged on
one side, for which reason the houses have a more or less
elongated form, the length corresponding to the number of the
inhabitants. Owing to the square form the size of the Alaska
houses varies within narrower limits, the number of their
inhabitants is also more limited than in Greenland. Only some
tribes in the Interior, described by Glasunow as a mixed race,
seem to have larger houses, and so had the Aleutians in former
times. But in Alaska on the other hand, in order to make up
for the lack of sufficient room for assemblies in the houses
there are larger public buildings, one or two in each place.
They are called: kagse, plur. kagsit, also kagge, kashim, kassigit,
and as it seems their use continues from Alaska towards the
East at a rate corresponding to the narrowness of the dwelling
houses.
In Southern Alaska the houses resemble those of the
Indians by having a hearth in the middle of the floor with a
smokehole in the roof over it. The inner room, as already
mentioned, is furnished on three sides with alcoves, affording
separate open lodges or sleeping rooms, while the fourth
affords the entrance. This construction gives the houses a
somewhat cruciform appearance. Moreover they are comparatively
spacious and built mostly of wood covered with earth only on
the outside. Northward on the coast of Bering Strait, WHERE
WOOD BECOMES SCARCER the added alcoves disappear; the size
of the inner room consequently diminishes. The resting places
more especially are reduced to the utmost narrowness; the
hearth for want of fuel is displaced in favour of the blubber
lamps; and the middle of the room instead occupied by the
women, serving them as their working place.
Near the Mackenzie R. we again meet with the cruciform
construction, but beyond this border it wholly disappears. By
degrees as wood becomes scarcer we also see SNOW TRIED AS A
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