456 A WINTER IN CHERRY ISLAND. 



Professor learned the following particulars : — In the 

 month of Septemher, 1825, this man and seven others 

 were conveyed there from Hammerfest ; and on the 

 very day of their arrival killed eighteen walruses. Those 

 animals were then very numerous, and up to the end of 

 the year, the party were very successful. One day during 

 Christmas week they slaughtered upwards of seventy. 

 This was by moonlight, or rather by the light afforded 

 by the Aurora borealis, for in the depth of winter day 

 had entirely ceased. Indeed, it was only at noon, and 

 in clear weather, that a little twilight was perceptible 



But after the commencement of the new year the 

 walruses became much scarcer ; partly owing to the 

 numbers destroyed, and partly because the remainder 

 began to shun the place. This was in measure attributable 

 to the numerous skinned carcases of those animals that 

 had been thrown into the sea, and subsequently cast up 

 on the shore. As the season advanced, indeed, the 

 captures daily diminished, and in March ceased alto- 

 gether. On the 23rd July, when a vessel came from 

 Hammei'fest to carry home the jjarty, the spoil consisted 

 of 677 walruses, the skins of three polar bears, and 

 about thirty blue foxes, as also some eider-down. During 

 the whole time that these eight men remained on Cherry 

 Island, not one of them was ill ; and the winter aj)pears 

 to have been one of the mildest. 



The following winter, or that of 1826-7, vvas a very 

 severe one, accomjjanied by great snow-falls. From 

 October to March the weather was so cold as often to 

 compel the men to remain for eight days together within 

 their hut, which it was hardly possible to keep sufficiently 

 warm. This, however, was less attributable to a high 

 degree of cold than to the suffocating keenness the air 

 had acquired in its progress across the sea, and which 

 rendered it impossible for them, at times, to remain out 



