COMMERCIAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA IN 1905. 35 



ivory-pointed spears and seal-skin line and floats. When the animal 

 is exhausted by its efforts to escape the hunters draw near and give 

 the death stroke with a lance. 



According to The Friend, published at Honolulu, Hawaii, March 1, 

 1872, the whalers began to turn their attention to walrus-catching 

 about the year 1868. During the first part of every season there is 

 but little opportunity to capture whales, they being within the limits 

 of the icy barrier. As a result, much of the whaler's time during 

 July and August was devoted to capturing walruses. Men would be 

 landed on the shore in June and left to watch for the animals to haul 

 up on the beach at certain points. The walrus must either come 

 ashore or get on the ice, and when a herd is well ashore one or two old 

 bulls are generally left on watch. The best shot among the hunters 

 now creeps up, and by a successful rifle shot or two kills the guard. 

 Owing to their very defective hearing, the noise made by the rifle 

 does not awake them. The gun is then put aside and each hunter, 

 armed with a sharp ax, approaches the sleeping animals and cuts the 

 spines of as many of them as possible before the others become 

 alarmed and stampede for the water and escape. 



The white hunters rarely make use of anything but the two long, 

 curved tusks with which the animal is equipped and which average 

 about 5 pounds to the pair. If time permits, however, the flesh is 

 boiled and the oil saved. To many of the Eskimos, especially on the 

 Arctic shore, the walrus is almost a necessity of life, and the devasta- 

 tion wrought among the herds by the whalers has been, and is yet, the 

 cause of fearful suffering and death to many of the natives. The 

 flesh is food for men and dogs; the oil also is used for food and for 

 lighting and heating the houses; the skin, when tanned and oiled, 

 makes a durable cover for the large skin boats; the intestines make 

 waterproof clothing, window-covers, and floats; the tusks are used for 

 lance or spear points or are carved into a great variety of useful and 

 ornamental objects, and the bones are used to make heads for spears 

 and for other purposes. At the present time the Kuskoquim district 

 is the only one in which the walrus is fairly common. 



In addition to hunting the walrus themselves, the whalers also pur- 

 chase from the Eskimos the tusks, or ivory, that they have secured. 

 The table on page 36 shows the quantity and value of walrus oil and 

 ivory secured since 1868. Part of this was undoubtedly secured from 

 the natives of Siberia, but that is more than offset by the large quan- 

 tity which has been brought down by the whalers and not reported . 



