160 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



Unusual thickness of the skin. — The thickness of the hide^ of 

 the walrus is, after all, in my opinion, its most anomalous feature. I 

 remember well how surprised I was when I followed the incision of 

 the broadax used in beheading the specimen shot lor my benefit, to 

 find that the skin over the shoulders and around the throat and «.hest 

 was 3 inches thick — a pufl'j^ spongy epidermis, outward hateful to the 

 sight, and inwardly resting upon the slightly acrid fat or blubber so 

 characteristic of this animal. Nowhere is this hide, ujion the thin- 

 nest iDoint of measurement, less than half an inch thick. It feeds 

 exclusively ui)on shellfish {Lamellihranclu'afa), or clams principally, 

 and also ujDon the bulbous roots and tender stalks of certain marine 

 plants and grasses which grow in great abundance over the bottoms 

 of broad, shallow lagoons and bays of the main Alaskan coast. I took 

 from the iDauncli of the walrus above mentioned more tlian a bushel of 

 crushed clams in their shells, all of which that animal had evidently 

 just swallowed, for digestion had scarcely commenced. Many of those 

 clams in that stomach, large as my clenched hands, were not even 

 broken; and it is in digging this shellfish food that the services ren 

 dered by the enormous tusks become apparent.^ 



Cowardice op the walrus op Berinci Sea. — It may not accord 

 with the siiigular tales told, on the Atlantic side, about the uses of 

 these gleaming ivory teeth, so famous and consi)icuous; but I believe 

 that the Alaskan walrus employs them solely in the labor of digging 

 clams and rooting bulbs from those muddy oozes and sand bars in the 

 estuary waters peculiar to his geographical distribution. Certainly, 

 it is difficult for me to reconcile the idea of such uncouth, timid 



' While savage man has utilized the tough hide of Rosviarns and Obesus, the skin 

 was also used by the Russians^themselves to cover the packages of furs sent from 

 Sitka to Kiachta, China; the sldn was there stripped and again sewed anew over 

 the chests of tea that were received in exchange for these furs thus enveloped, and 

 which were carried hence to Moscow. Here the soundest portions of the hide 

 remaining on the boxes were finally cut up and stamped into " kopecks '' and a 

 variety of small change, in time, to revisit its nati's e seas used as a circulating 

 medium, for value received, throughout all Alaska where the Russians held power. 

 A leather currency was long known to that country, and old Philip Volkov, of 

 St. Paul, told me that he never saw silver or gold coin vised on the seal islands 

 iTutil our people brought it in 1868. These walrus pat chment rubles were worth 

 much less than their face value — sometime-; only one- third. The Russians also 

 made harness out of walrus leather. As long as the weather remained cold and 

 dry the wear of this material was highly satisfactory, t it woe to the '•kibitscha'' 

 if caught out in a rain storm. The walrus harness then stretches like India 

 rubber, and the horses fairly leave the vehicle far behind, sticking in the road, 

 though the traces are unbroken. 



'-'It is, and always will be, a source of sincere regret to me and my friends that 

 I did not bodily preserve this huge paunch and its contents. It would have filled 

 a halif barrel very snugly, and then its mass of freshly swallowed clams {Mya 

 trnncata), filmy streaks of macerated kelp, and fragments of crustaceans, could 

 have been carefully examined during a week of leisure at the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution. It was, however, ripped open so quickly by one of the Aleuts, who kicked 

 the contents out, that I hardly knew what had been done ere the strong-smelling 

 subject was directly under my nose. The natives then were anxious that I should 

 hurry through v>^ith my sketches, measurements, etc., so that they might the 

 sooner push off their egg-laden bidarrah and cross back to the main island before 

 the fogs would settle over our homeward track, or the rapidly rising wind shift to 

 the northward and imperil our passage. Weighty reasons, t\ ese, which so fully 

 impressed me that this unique stomach of a carnivora was overlooked and left 

 behind; hence, v>^ith the exception of curiously turning over the clams (especially 

 those iTUcrushed specimens), which formed the great bulk of its contents, I have 

 no memoranda or even distinct recollection of the other materi 's that were incor- 

 por;vted. The olivaceous green color of its soft, pasty excremc '; must be derived 

 from eating cJUorosjjerriioe and, divers branches of algoid growtii. 



