The builder next proceeds to let himself out by enlarging the proposed
doorway into the form of a Gothic arch, three feet high and two feet and
a half wide at the bottom, communicating with which they construct two
passages, each from ten to twelve feet long and from four to five feet
in height, the lowest being that next the hut. The roofs of these
passages are sometimes arched, but more generally made flat by slabs
laid on horizontally. In first digging the snow for building the hut,
they take it principally from the part where the passages are to be
made, which purposely brings the floor of the latter considerably lower
than that of the hut, but in no part do they dig till the bare ground
appears.
The work just described completes the walls of a hut, if a single
apartment only be required; but if, on account of relationship, or from
any other cause, several families are to reside under one roof, the
passages are made common to all, and the first apartment (in that case
made smaller) forms a kind of antechamber, from which you go through an
arched doorway five feet high into the inhabited apartments. When there
are three of these, which is generally the case, the whole building,
with its adjacent passages, forms a tolerably regular cross.
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