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Show 106 BASIS OF AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 fuel, and other necessities, they have made provision with great ingenuity. ^^ Seal anid walrus are their staples- the meat for food, the fat for light and fuel, the skins for clothing and protection, the bones for the framework of canoes, etc. The popular * lmpression that the Eskimo live mainly upon blubber and fat is entirely wrong, for that article is far too precious and necessary for light and heat to be wasted on food. Their winter houses are built of blocks of packed snow, in the form, roughly, of a hemisphere, and involving the principle of the arch.\ Summer houses are constructed of skins. ^ One of the most interesting of Eskimo devices is the stone lamp in which blubber oil is burned by means of a wick of moss. The origin and distribution of the Eskimo lamp have given rise to much discussion. It is held by some that it was derived from the Scandinavians in Greenland in comparatively recent times, and thence spread rapidly from group to group until it became one of the most distinctive of Eskimo utensils. Other authorities regard it as entirely an indigenous device. 1 __ N Next to the lamp, the development of the dog-sledge and the skin canoe must be regarded as the important factors in the industrial life of these people. They are both admirably suited to their purposes and 1Tylor, in Jour. Anthrop. Inst., 1884, p. 349; consult, also, Hough, " The Origin and Range of the Eskimo Lamp/' in American Anthropologist, 1898, p. 118. |