WALRUS-HUNTING. 133 
likely been driven away by the older males from their more 
northern haunts. The walruses herd on the lowest edge of 
the coast which is within reach of the high spring-tides. When 
the Aleuts prepare to attack the animals, they take leave of 
each other as if they were going to face death, being no less 
afraid of the mighty tusks of the walruses than of the awkward- 
ness of their own companions. Armed with lances and heavy 
axes, they stealthily approach the walruses, and having disposed 
their ranks, suddenly fall upon them with loud shouts, and 
endeavour to drive them from the sea, taking care that none 
of them escape into the water, as in this case the rest would 
irresistibly follow and precipitate the huntsmen along with 
them. As soon as the walruses have been driven far enough 
up the strand, the Aleuts attack them with their lances, en- 
deavouring to strike at them in places where the hide is not so 
thick, and then pressing with all their might against the spear, to 
render the wound deep and deadly. The slaughtered animals fall 
one over the other and form large heaps, while the huntsmen, ut- 
tering furious shouts and intoxicated with carnage, wade through 
the bloody mire. They then cleave the jaws and take out the 
tusks, which are the chief objects of the slaughter of several 
thousands of walruses, since neither their flesh nor their fat 
is made use of in the colony. Sir George Simpson, in his 
“Overland Journey Round the World,” relates that the bales 
of fur sent to Kjachta are covered with walrus hide; then it 
is made to protect the tea chests, which find their way to 
Moscow; and after all these wanderings, the far-travelled skin 
returns again to its native seas, when, cut into small pieces and 
stamped with a mark, it serves as a medium of exchange. The 
carcases of the wholesale slaughter are left on the shore to be 
washed away by the spring-tides, which soon erase every vestige 
of the bloody scene, and in the following year the inexhaustible 
north sends new victims to the coast. 
Kane gives us a vivid description of a walrus hunt in Smith’s 
Sound, most likely the most northern point of the earth inhabited 
byman. “ After a while Myouk became convinced, from signs or 
sounds, that wairuses were waiting for him in a small space 
of recently open water that was glazed over with a few days’ 
growth of ice, and, moving gently on, soon heard the charac- 
teristic bellow of a bull,—the walrus, like some bipeds, being 
