CHAP. III.] THE WALRUS. 117 



number of the birds I have enumerated above belong to the 

 sea, not to the land, and this is the case with nearly all the 

 animals which for three or four hundred years back have been the 

 objects of capture in the Arctic regions. This industry, which 

 during the whale-fishing period yielded a return perhaps equal to 

 that of the American oil-wells in our time, has not now in the 

 most limited degree the importance it formerly had. For the 

 animal whose capture yielded this rich return, the right whale 

 {Balcena mysticetus L.), is now so extirpated in these navigable 

 waters, that the whalers were long ago compelled to seek new 

 fishing-places in other parts of the Polar seas. It is therefore 

 no longer the whale, but other species of animals which attract 

 the hunter to the coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. 



Of these animals the most important for the last fifty years 

 has been the walrus, but it too is in course of being extirpated. 

 It is now seldom found during summer on the west coast of 

 Novaya Zemlya south of Matotschkin Schar. During our visits 

 to that island in 1875, 1876, and 1878 we did not see one of 

 these animals. But in the Kara Gate, on the east coast of 

 Novaya Zemlya, and at certain places in the Kara Sea, abundant 

 hunting is still to be had. Earlier in the year the walrus is also 

 to be met with among the drift-ice on the west coast, and to the 

 south, off the mouth of the Petchora, although the number of 

 the animals that are captured by the Samoyeds at Chabarova 

 appears to be exceedingly small. On the other hand the Dutcli, 

 in their first voyages hither, saw a considerable number of 

 these gregarious animals. The walrus, however, did not then 

 occur here in such abundance as they did at the same time on 

 Spitzbergen and Bear Island, which evidently formed their 

 principal haunts. 



During Stephen Bennet's third voyage to Bear Island in 1606, 

 700 to 800 walruses were killed there in six hours, and in 1608 

 nearly 1,000 in seven hours. The carcases left lying on the 

 beach attracted bears thither in such numbers that, for instance, 

 in 1609 nearly fifty of them were killed by the crew of a single 

 vessel. At one place eighteen bears were seen at once (Purchas, 

 iii. p. 560). A Norwegian skipper was still able during a 

 wintering in 1824-25 to kill 677 walruses. But when Tobiesen 

 wintered there in 1865-66 he killed only a single walrus, and 

 on the two occasions of my landing there I did not see one. 

 Formerly the hunters almost every year, during late autumn 

 when the drift-ice had disappeared, found " walrus on land," i.e. 

 herds of several hundred walruses which had crept up on some 

 low, even, sandy beach, to pass days and weeks there in an 

 almost motionless state. During this period of rest most of 

 them appear to be sunk in deep sleep, yet not all, for— according 

 to the concurrent statements of all the walrus-hunters with 



