DISINTERESTED ADVICE. 147 



poon "drawing" would be very much lessened. 

 The skyppar seemed to have a good deal of confi- 

 dence in it, but he had not as yet had any opportu- 

 nity of testing it. 



Fifthly. He had killed ten walruses last night, 

 and all by " jaging" them in the water, as they have 

 been so much persecuted lately on this part of the 

 coast that they will hardly sit on the ice at all. 

 He strongly condemns, in theory, the practice of 

 shooting at walruses, but admits that he is at a 

 great disadvantage from the want of a gun, as ev- 

 ery body else is shooting ; and he says that, when 

 one ship shoots, all the others in the vicinity are 

 partially compelled to follow suit, but that many 

 more walruses would be killed on the whole if no- 

 body were to fire. 



This may be all very true in theory, but practi- 

 cally I find that every body shoots whenever they 

 find that they Can not get within harpooning dis- 

 tance, although they all strenuously exhort us not 

 to do it, and seem very jealous of our doing so, 

 which I attribute to the fact of our being much 

 more successful with the rifle than any of these reg- 

 ular professionals. This is readily accounted for, 

 as our rifles, charged with five drachms of powder 

 and a bullet hardened by an admixture of tin, gen- 

 erally smash the walruses' skulls to pieces ; where- 

 as the rifles these men use, being mostly light, 

 old-fashioned ones, on the polygrooved principle, 

 charged with a spherical bullet of soft lead, pro- 



