284 MUSK OXEN. Chap. XVII. 



however, taken the precaution to approach him along the 

 edge of a ravine, so by retreating a few paces down the 

 steep slope I was able to shoot him when he halted on the 

 brink above me. Another time three bulls allowed me to 

 walk close up to them. I shot one, but the other two only 

 stared stupidly, as if they could not understand it. I was 

 obliged to shoot a second, as he seemed inclined to be 

 troublesome, having begun to rub his horns against his fore- 

 legs — a sure sign that mischief is brewing ; even then we 

 had to pelt the remaining one with clods, hitting him re- 

 peatedly, but holding our guns ready cocked, for the musk ox 

 is as impetuous as he is fearless — before he would move away. 

 Three or four sportsmen may station themselves about a 

 herd, close in to seventy or eighty yards, and then by 

 picking off the restless ones first, so bewilder the remainder 

 as to secure them all. I have been one of three to shoot 

 down a herd of ten oxen in this manner, in three or four 

 minutes. No wonder then that we looked out anxiously for 

 musk oxen at Port Kennedy ; one such battue as this 

 would have supplied us with fresh beef every day for three 

 months ! Their flesh is decidedly beef, but the fat is as 

 decidedly mutton fat ; in autumn the flesh of the males is 

 often so strongly tainted with musk that only the dogs 

 can eat it. 



Musk oxen are unknown in Greenland; and the only 

 instance that has ever come to my knowledge of their exist- 

 ence on the western shores of Baffin's Bay, or eastward of 

 Wellington Channel and Prince Regent's Inlet, is the soli- 

 tary one of a skull found near Cape Horsburgh (lat. 75 N.) 

 in 1865, when the whaler 'Queen' wintered in its vicinity. 

 Dr. Kane's expedition found some of their skulls on the 

 shore of Smith's Sound, where the mean annual temperature 

 is 34 below the freezing point ! How much farther north 

 they may exist, is not known. 



