Each Eskimo house is entered by a long, low passage, made of logs and turf. The floor of the one big room is covered with boards, and a long, wooden platform at one end is the sleeping place for the whole family. On another side is a fireplace lined with pebbles, where the mother cooks the food for the family. There is a window in the house or maybe there are two, so that altogether the Eskimos of Labrador can be far more comfortable than their brothers and sisters of Greenland.
They live in much the same way, however. They dress in furs; they fish; they kill seals; they hunt the deer; they ride over the country in low sledges drawn by unruly dogs; they make kayaks, in which they paddle about among the islands near to the shore. They are not obliged to build snow or stone houses like their brothers in Greenland. Cold as it is, forests of spruce and pine grow not very far inland; so that they are able to get plenty of logs for the walls of their houses. These they plaster so thickly with turf, that the wind cannot make its way inside.
As you leave the coast, and travel inland, you will find that the air becomes warmer and that there are more trees and plants. The country is much pleasanter, and no doubt this is the reason that the Indians of Labrador prefer to live here in winter rather than on the coast. The redmen are great hunters, too, and as there are many wild animals in the forests, they spend the autumn and winter trapping and shooting. Here and there along the ponds and streams you may see the bark wigwams of the redmen.
Children dressed in skins go skimming past you over the snow fields. They wear snow-shoes on their feet, so they can travel fast. When they are tired of this sport, they can take a ride on a dog-sledge, or play with their puppies. The boys help their fathers set traps for martens and foxes; they go on porcupine hunts; they search for beaver villages, and sometimes they come hurrying home to say that they have come upon a bear or the tracks of a lynx or an otter.
The girls learn to embroider moccasins and leggings with beads and porcupine quills; they bring wood for the fires and drinking water from the streams; they weave baskets. After a deer-hunt they dry the meat and grind it to make pemmican. Indeed, they learn all those things that Indians think are necessary for the making of good and helpful women. So the days pass and the years follow each other in bleak Labrador.