THE WALRUS 717 



abundant on Cheric or Bear island, lying about two hundred an4 eighty miles to the 

 northward of Cape North, in Norway; no less than six or seven hundred having 

 been killed on one occasion in six hours, while on another from nine hundred to a 

 thousand were slaughtered in less than seven hours. The animals were accustomed 

 to collect in large parties on the shore; and the plan adopted was first to shoot those 

 nearest the sea, whose bodies then formed a barrier, cutting off the retreat of the 

 rest. In less than eight years the walruses on Bear island had become scarce and 

 shy, and it was not long before they were completely exterminated. The retreat- 

 ing walruses were then followed to Spitzbergen and Greenland, and even there their 

 numbers have so diminished that walrus hunting cannot be profitably conducted 

 unless carried on in conjunction with whaling. Baron Nordenskjold states that at 

 the present day the walrus is seldom found during summer on the west coast of 

 Nova Zembla to the south of Matotshkin Shar, but that on the east coast of the 

 same island, and in parts of the Kara Sea it is fairly common. It is but rarely seen 

 in Iceland, but is not unfrequent on the coasts of Western Siberia. 



In America the Atlantic walrus formerly ranged from Nova Scotia to about 

 latitude 80, and was at one time abundant in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the 

 eastern coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. About 1534, walruses were very 

 abundant on the Magdalen islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and many expedi- 

 tions were soon after fitted out in Europe for the capture of the animals on these 

 and adjacent islands. Till a few years ago, the heaps of walrus bones on the shores 

 of the Magdalen islands attested the slaughter that had taken place. According 

 to Dr. A. S. Packard, the last walrus seen in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was killed 

 in 1840; but a few have been observed subsequently on some of the neighboring 

 coasts and islands. In Greenland it was stated that about the year 1877, the walrus 

 was only sparsely distributed in most places, with the exception of the tract lying 

 between the 66th and 68th parallels, where it was sometimes met with in consider- 

 able numbers, and was regularly hunted by the natives in their canoes. Walruses 

 also occur on the west coast of Baffin's Bay, and some of the islands to the north; 

 but their range appears to be limited by the western shore of Hudson's Bay; and as 

 they are not again met with till we reach Alaska, a large part of the coast of Arctic 

 America is probably uninhabited by them. 



Although the Pacific walrus has been known in Europe since the middle of the 

 seventeenth century, it was not much molested by hunters till about the year 1860, by 

 which date whaling had become much less profitable than it had been. The range of 

 this variety was always much more restricted than that of its Atlantic cousin, reach- 

 ing from the limit of ice southward on the American coast as far as latitude 55, and 

 on the Asiatic shores to latitude 60. In longitude its range to the north of Behring 

 Strait in the Arctic Sea was limited to the eastward by Point Barrow in Northern 

 Alaska, and to the westward by Cape Chelagskoy, in longitude 170, on the northern 

 coast of Siberia. As on the latter coast the range of the Atlantic walrus did not 

 extend eastward of the Lena, the two varieties were widely separated from one 

 another in this direction, as they also were in the opposite direction. On the 

 Alaskan side of Behring Sea and Behring Strait, the Pacific walrus was formerly 

 found in enormous herds in Bristol bay and Norton and Kotzebue sounds; and in 



