54 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



On the 7th the weather continued foggy, with a 

 cold northeast wind, and we made very little prog- 

 ress against it. We are coasting along the outside 

 of this great ice-pack, which fills up Deeva Bay, and 

 embraces the whole archipelago of the Thousand 

 Islands. This, the east side of the pack, has its edge 

 clear and well-defined, being packed tight by the 

 joint influence of the northeast wind lately prevail- 

 ing and the current, which always sets more or less 

 in the same direction. When going in pursuit of 

 the walruses among the ice, it is sometimes very 

 difficult to get the boats through the ice at the out- 

 er edge of the pack, where it is so closely wedged 

 together, and we generally have to drag them over 

 the ice with great labor for fifty or sixty yards, un- 

 til we get into opener water inside the pack. This 

 morning Lord David shot a cow walrus through 

 the head as she was shuffling off the ice. She im- 

 mediately sank, but floated up again in a few sec- 

 onds, when she was harpooned and secured. 



In the afternoon I went after another cow, which, 

 /ith two half-grown young ones, lay apparently 

 asleep on a small outlying patch of icebergs. As 

 usual, we got almost near enough to harpoon them, 

 when the old one got alert, and immediately aroused 

 the two young ones, and, as they seemed unwilling 

 to move, she rolled them one after the other like 

 barrels into the water, and was in the act of follow- 

 ing them herself, when my rifle bullet penetrated 

 her brain, and she tumbled head foremost off the 



