Note 12 — BOOK IX.
Reading edition
—Page 357, stanza lxxiii.
Ice-blocks the walls, and hollow'd ice the roof!
The houses of the Esquimaux who received Captain Lyon were thus constructed:—the frozen snow being formed into slabs of about two feet long and half a foot thick; the benches were made with snow, strewed with twigs, and covered with skins; and the lamp suspended from the roof, fed with seal or walrus oil, was the sole substitute for the hearth, and furnished light and fire for cooking.
The Esquimaux were known to the settlers and pirates of Norway by the contemptuous name of dwarfs or pigmies—(Skrœllings).