208 



Our North Land. 



the Bay. The natives frequently secure them in the open water 

 with harpoons, but this is a slow method. At certain seasons of the 

 year, in the early spring particularly, they are found in multitudes 

 sleeping and lounging on floating ice-pans, and may be shot with 

 repeating rifles very rapidly. In proof of this I may mention that 

 the Hudson's Bay Company's agent at Churchill has, for some years 

 back, sent a walrus expedition to the north of the Bay each spring, 

 and on every occasion the men have loaded their vessels with 

 blubber, hides and ivory in a remarkably short space of time. There 

 seems to be a great number of these animals in those waters, so that 



THE MOTTLED SEAL. 



the industry, like the porpoise fishery, may be extended to almost 

 unlimited proportions. 



From the information I have received I am not in a position to 

 state whether or not the seal can be found in the vast herds, by the 

 hundreds of thousands, on the ice in early spring in Hudson Strait, 

 as they appear annually off the, coasts of Labrador and Newfound- 

 land. They are very numerous in the waters of both the Bay 

 and the Strait ; and as there has never been an attempt made to 

 prove or disprove their existence in the Strait in breeding herds, 

 such as have sustained the vast sealing industry of northern New- 



