WALRUSES. 137 



their harpoons also ; but, as none of them appeared 

 to care about sharing his fate, they killed him just 

 as we came up. 



"We had hitherto lost so many walruses by ab- 

 staining from firing and always trying to harpoon 

 them, that of late we had adopted the plan of firing 

 whenever we got a fair chance, and we found that, 

 by using double charges of powder, and by harden- 

 ing the lead for the bullets by an admixture of 

 zinc, we could penetrate the hard crania of the wal- 

 ruses easily enough when struck in the right place. 

 It was a beautiful sunny night, and we had a most 

 agreeable and exciting chasse. The water swarmed 

 with walruses, and in about three hours we had se- 

 cured eight, besides two which sank. All of these 

 were either shot dead or so stupefied with shots on 

 the head that they allowed the harpooners to strike 

 them. One I killed by firing up his nostrils as he 

 faced the boat, at about eight yards 1 distance. 



This herd were mostly cows and indifferent young 

 bulls, but among them I noticed one enormous old 

 gray bull, who looked as thick as a sugar hogshead, 

 and was by far the largest walrus I had yet seen. 

 This monster came up snorting several times with- 

 in nine or ten yards while we were fast to two oth- 

 ers, but he was too wary to allow himself to be 

 harpooned, and if I had shot him at that time he 

 would certainly have sunk before we could have got 

 hold of him. These old bulls are always very light 

 colored, from being nearly devoid of hair ; their 



