174 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



made the same discovery ; and our people say that 

 all the walruses "must have gone on land now, 1 ' 

 and that the best chance is to look for them among 

 the Thousand Islands ; but it seems to us that 

 among so many islands, and so many hundred miles 

 of rugged shores, we stand but a bad chance of find- 

 ing them with our slow-sailing vessel. 



About this time of year the walruses usually con- 

 gregate together in vast herds, sometimes to the 

 number of several thousands, and all lie down in a 

 mass in some secluded bay or some rocky island, 

 and there they remain, in a semi -torpid sort of 

 state, for weeks together, without moving or feed- 

 ing. They do not usually do this until near the 

 end of August, by which time most of the vessels 

 have departed full, and of course it is a very great 

 chance whether any of those remaining will find 

 these trysting-places in the few days which remain 

 before the season breaks up ; but such chances are 

 what every Spitzbergen walrus-hunter prays for by 

 day and dreams of by night, because they know 

 that if they are fortunate enough to find the wal- 

 ruses under these circumstances, they may be ena- 

 bled to kill a small fortuneVworth of them in a few 

 hours. 



I never saw a walrus on terra firma myself, but 

 I know that frequently on these occasions, even of 

 late years, prodigious numbers of them have been 

 slaughtered by the lucky finders. 



At the close of my first visit to Spitzbergen, in 



