LAST DAY WITH THE SEA-HORSES. 189 



p. 506) has shown to demonstration that the coast- 

 line is rising at the rate of four feet per century. 



On this island I observed a farther most inter- 

 esting proof of its elevation. This was a sort of 

 trench or furrow, of about one hundred yards long, 

 three or four feet deep, and about four feet broad, 

 which was plowed up among the boulders. It was 

 about twenty feet above the sea-level, and extended 

 from northeast to southwest, being exactly the line 

 in which the current-borne ice travels at the pres- 

 ent day, so that I presume there is no doubt it 

 must have been caused by the passage of a heavy 

 iceberg while the island lay under water. 



We left the island about one o'clock to inspect 

 some small packs of floating ice, and, most unex- 

 pectedly, I had one of the most exciting afternoon's 

 sport I enjoyed the whole season, although it was 

 attended throughout with the most perverse bad 

 luck. As this was the last day on which we saw 

 any walruses at all, I will venture, even at the risk 

 of horrifying the sensitive reader, to give an account 

 of it in detail. 



We first found five good bull-walruses on a piece 

 of ice. Four were sound asleep, with their sterns 

 toward us, but the remaining villain seemed to be 

 acting as sentry; however, he permitted us to ap- 

 proach to about thirty yards 1 distance, when he 

 snorted, and began to kick his sleeping companions 

 to arouse them. I had covered the sentinel's head, 

 and had determined that he should pay for his alert- 



