Omaha daily bee., 1908-07-05
TENTINe IN THE ARCTIC
Rehections of n Cooling Nature SUIT
able for n Lofty Temper
aturc,

allure.
The experience Of those who tent in tn
arctic during the colder winter months
is to be summarized about as follows;
When the tent has been pitched the tenn
p%erature within It is some fifteen or twenty
degrees higher than outside, CT thirty II
It is fifty degrees in the open; one Is damp
and warm from the strenuous exercise
Of the day. but soon becomes cod and
shlvers; one crawls into his sleeping bag
and makes entries in the diary clumsily
with ones mittens on: the heat from ones
body forms boar frost on everything in
the tent, and congeals in the sleeping bag,
so that it becomes stiff and heavy with
ice during the days travel when II freezes
and soaking wet when one gets into il
at night and thaws it out; this In turn
vets ones clothing, and the trousers and
coat freeze stiff as sole leather when one
breaks camp I'm the morning; the twenty
four hours are a round of Indebtedness,
and the i~ce-crusted tent and icy sleeping
bags become a heavy load tor the sled.
When one follows Eskimo methods the
conditions are markedly different. on any
treeless open Cunless 1t be perhaps during
the first month of winter) an area Of
compactly drifted snow is easily founI;
the snow-knives (of bone or iron, according
to circumstances are brought out and the
surface of the drift is divided into blocks
Of domino shape, say fourteen by thirty
inches and four inches thick; these are
then placed on edge and end to end in a
circle the size OF the desired ground area
of the dome-shaped hut; then, on the
principles of architecture that apply to
domes, whether made Of stone or snow,
the beehive house is completed.
Two men rqn in an hour huilt n bOusn
large enough fer eight to sleep in. When
the house is completed a doorway is cut
in its side near the ground, skins are
spread over the floor, one brushes him
self as clear of snow as possible. and
crawls inside. The oil lamps are then
lit, and the house is soon brought to a
temperature considerably above the freez-
ing point; for snow is one of the besi
known nonconductors of heat, and the
intense cold of the outside penetra.es the
walls only to a very slight degree. But
when the house gets warm the Inrner side
of the snow demo begins to thaw, anu TIE
water formed is sucked up into thu Stow,
blotter fashion; when this water pcne-
trates far enough into the snow to meet
the cold from the outside it freezes, ard
your snow house is turned into an ice dome
so strong that a polar bear can crawl
over II without danger OF breaking through.
When once inside the house the Eskimos
strip naked to the waist and hang their
clothes to dry on pegs in the wall. One
some Journeys we had sheet-iron stoves
procured from whalers in former years.,
which we Installed In the snow houses,
and in which we built roaring fires.
One is we'll placed to take omtort in tie
ingenuity Of man overcome a harsh en-
vironment when, sitting snug, warm and
lightly clad. one listens to an arctic bliz-
card whining helplessly over the ice vault
that two hours before was an oval snow
bank. l longed for a dressing gown and
slippers, but one cannot burden his sled
with such luXuries. There was no cold to
make the hands numb in writing the diary.
no frost to CONCEAL on the bed clothing.
and make it wet, none of the nights els
comforts and the morrow's forebod!ngs
that have been the stock in trade of the
makers of arctic books. And when we
broke camp In the morning we did not
burden the sled with an ice-stiffened 100
pound tent, but stuck in our belt the ten
ounce snow knife, our potential roof for
the coming night.-Harper's Magazine,