HABITS AND THE CHASE. 113 







backs and sterns, just as I have seen Bhinoceroses lying asleep 

 in the African forests : or, to use a more familiar simile, like a 

 lot of fat hogs in a British straw-yard. I should think there 

 were about eighty or one hundred on the ice, and many more 

 swam grunting and spouting around, and tried to clamber up 

 among their friends, who, like surly people in a full omnibus, 

 grunted at them angrily, as if to say, < Confound you, don't you 

 see that we are full ? ' There were plenty more good flat icebergs 

 about, but they always seem to like being packed as closely 

 as possible for mutual warmth. These four islands were several 

 hundred yards apart, . . . ."* 



Mr. Lamont thus refers to the number seen on another occa- 

 sion, and incidentally to their watchful habits: "We had a 

 pleasant row of four or five miles over calm water quite free of 

 ice, and were cheered for the latter half of the distance by the 

 sonorous bellowing and trumpeting of a vast number of Wal- 

 ruses. We soon came in sight of a long line of low flat icebergs 

 crowded with Sea-horses. There were at least ten of these bergs 

 so packed with the Walruses that in some places they lay two 

 deep on the ice. There can not have been less than three hun- 

 dred in sight at once $ but they were very shy and restless, and, 

 although we tried every troop in succession as carefully as pos- 

 sible, we did not succeed in getting within harpooning distance 

 of a single Walrus. Many of them were asleep j but there were 

 always some moving^, about who gave the alarm to their sleep- 

 ing comrades by flapping them with their fore feet, and one troop 

 after another manage to shuffle into the sea always just a second 

 or so in time to avoid a deadly harpoon." t 



"With, reference to the Walrus," says Captain Hall, "Mr. 

 Rogers told me that one day, when out cruising for Whales, he 

 went, with two boats and crews, half way across Frobisher Bay, 

 and then came to an iceberg one hundred feet above the sea, 

 and, mounting it, with a spy-glass, took a look all around. 

 Whales there were none; but Walrus *Why ? , to use his figu- 

 rative but expressive words, l there were millions out on the 

 pieces of ice, drifting with the tide Walrus in every direc- 

 tion millions on millions 7 ."! While these numbers are not, 

 doubtless, to be taken literally, they certainly imply an immense 

 number of Walruses. The context states that while the whalers 



* Seasons with the Sea-horses, p. 72. 



tlbid., pp. 80, 81. 



t Arctic Kesearcb.es, etc., p. 234. 



Misc. Pub. No. 12 8 



