ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 163 



bared by the rising and ebbing of the tide. They are hunted here to 

 a considerable extent for their ivory. No wah-us are found south of 

 the Aleutian Islands. Still, not more than forty-five or fifty years ago, 

 small gatherings of these animals were killed here and there on the 

 islands between Kadiak and Unimak Pass. The greatest aggregate 

 of them south of Bering Straits will always be found in the estuaries 

 of Bristol Bay and on the north side of the peninsula. 



Prehistoric range op the walrus. — Geologists find the record 

 of the great ice period well filled up by the range of the walrus, then, 

 as far down on the Atlantic Coast as the littoral margins of South and 

 North Carolina, and its fossil remains are common in the diluvial 

 deposits of England and France, while the phosphate beds of New Jer- 

 sey are exceedingly rich in old walrus bones. But within historic 

 times there is no evidence tliat points to tlie existence of the walrus 

 on the New England coast. During the last half of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury they are known to have frequented the southern confines of Nova 

 Scotia. That hardy navigator, James Cartier, tells us in his quaint 

 vernacular that in May, 1534, he met at the island of "Ramea" (prob- 

 ably Sable Island), sporting in the sea, "very greate beastes, as greate 

 as oxen, which have two greate teeth in their mouths like unto Ele- 

 phant's teeth, & live also in the Sea. We saw them sleeping on the 

 banke of the water; wee, thinking to take it, went with our boates, 

 but so soon as he heard us he caste himself e into the sea." Another 

 old salt, "Thomas James, of Bristoll," speaking of the same subject 

 shortly after, says, "the fish cometh on banke (to do their kind) in 

 April, May, and June, by numbers of thousands, which fish is very 

 big, and hatli two great teeth ; and the skin of them is like Beeffes 

 leather; and they will not away from their yong ones. The jong ones 

 are as good meat as Veale. And with the bellies of five of the saide 

 fishes they make a hogshead of Train e, which Traine is very sweet, 

 which, if it will make sope, the King of Spaine may burne some of his 

 Olive trees. " ( ! ) This spice of Yankee enterprise in ' ' sope, " evidently, 

 did not come to a successful head.^ 



The w^alrus "bidarrah." — The finest bidarrah skin boats of 

 transportation that I have seen in this country were those of the St. 

 Lawrence natives. These were made out of dressed walrus hides, 

 shaved and pared down by them to the requisite thickness so that, 

 when they were sewed with sinews to the wooden whalebone-lashed 

 frames of these boats, thej^ dried into a pale, greenish white prior to 

 oiling, and were even then almost translucent, tough, and strong. 



Uses ob^ w^alrus hides. — Until I saw the bidarrahs of the St. Law- 

 rence natives in 1874, I was more or less inclined to believe that the 

 tough, thick, and spongy hide of the walrus would be too refractory 

 in dressing for use in covering such light frames, especially those of 

 the bidarka ; but the manifest excellence and seaworthiness of these 

 Eskimo boats satisfied me that I was mistaken. I saw, however, 

 abundant evidence of the much greater labor required in tanning or 



'I depart from the Pacific walrus, for a moment, in thus speaking of its Atlantic 

 brother with reference to the testimony of the rocks as to its limit ot southern 

 range north of the equator. For the thought of herds of walrus floating down on 

 immense frigid floes over the present lowlands of Virginia and North Carolina, 

 and of Anvers and near Paris. France, is an interesting one, relative to the features 

 of the great ice age. Down they came, that is certain. Van Beneden and Leidy 

 have recently figured their aged bones as they are silicified or cast in the marls 

 of those southern coasts and interiors. (See Leidy, Trans. Am. Phil. Soc, xi, 

 1880, Philadelphia. Van Beneden: Des de Oss. Foss. des Envirns d'Anvers; 

 Annales Mus. d'Hist. Nat. de Belgique, 1877, tome i, pp. 40-41.) No such bones 

 have as yet been found on the northwest coast or in Alaska. 



