182 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Aug. 



weight is noted on a receipt which is still in existence." — 

 (Rink.) 



The old Muscovy Company fitted out many a vessel 

 for Cherie Island, nearly midway between Spitzbergen 

 and Norway. Here as high as 1,000 walrus were capt- 

 ured by the crew of a single vessel in one hour, some 

 of them fourteen feet in length and weighing 3,000 

 pounds. Such a slaughter would be impossible in the 

 water, and, therefore, they must have been discovered 

 sunning themselves and asleep upon the land, a well- 

 known custom of these animals centuries ago. One 

 of the earlier expeditions penned up 500 alive and kept 

 them ^prisoners for several days. Our early writers re- 

 ported them in large numbers upon the islands of the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence. I saw a large herd upon the 

 land in 1908, lying upon the northern shore of Eider 

 Duck Island. 



There is evidence to show that walrus were at one 

 time, probably during the glacial period, numerous 

 along our Atlantic coast as far south as Virginia. They 

 were seen in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as late as 1839. 

 To-day only a few are seen as far south as Okak on the 

 Labrador. 



An amusing account by DeVeer, an early writer of 

 northern voyages, is highly interesting: 



The sea-horse is a wonderful strong monster of the sea, much 

 larger than an ox, which keeps continually in the seas, having a skin 

 like a sea calf or seal, with very short hayre, mouthed like a lion; 

 and many times they he upon the ice; they are hardly killed unless 

 you strike them just upon the forehead; it hath four feete but no 

 eares, and commonly it hath young, one at a time. And when the 

 fishermen chance to finde them upon a flake of ice with their young 

 ones, shee casteth her young ones before her into the water, and then 

 takes them in her arms, and so plungeth up and down with them; 



