MORSE AND MAHLEMOOT. 447 



jets of moisture or vapor from its confined breath which the ani- 

 mals blew off as they rose to respire. 



Mariners, while coasting in the Arctic, have often been put on 

 timely footing by a walrus fog-horn snorting and blowing as the 

 ship dangerously sails silently through dense fog toward land or 

 ice-floes, upon which those animals may be resting ; indeed, these 

 uncouth monitors to this indistinct danger rise and bob under and 

 around a vessel like so many gnomes or demons of fairy romance, 

 and sailors may well be pardoned for much of that strange yarning 

 which they have given to the reading world respecting the sea- 

 horse during the last three centuries. 



When a walrus-herd comes ashore, after short preliminary sur- 

 veys of the intended spot of landing, an old veteran usually takes 

 the lead of a band which is so disposed. 



Finally the first one makes a landing, and no sooner gets com- 

 posed upon the rocks for sleep than a second one comes along, 

 prodding and poking with its blunted tusks, demanding room also, 

 thus causing the first to change its position to another location still 

 farther off and up from the water, a few feet beyond ; then the sec- 

 ond is in turn treated in the same way by a third, and so on until 

 hundreds will be slowly packed together on the shore as thickly as 

 they can lie never far back from the surf, however pillowing 

 their heads upon the bodies of one another : and, they do not act 

 at all quarrelsome toward each other. Occasionally, in their lazy, 

 phlegmatic adjusting and crowding, the posteriors of some old bull 

 will be lifted up, and remain elevated in the air, while the passive 

 owner continues to sleep, with its head, perhaps, beneath the pudgy 

 form of its neighbor. 



These pinnipeds are, perhaps, of all animals, the most difficult 

 subjects that an artist can find to reproduce from life. There are 

 no angles or elbows to seize hold of. The lines of body and limbs 

 are all rounded, free and flowing ; yet, the very fleshiest examples 

 never have that bloated, wind-distended look which most of the 

 published figures give them. One must first become familiarized 

 with the restless, varying attitudes of these creatures by extended 

 personal contact and observation ere he can satisfy himself with the 

 result of his drawings, no matter how expert he may be in rapid and 

 artistic delineation. Life-studies by artists of the young of the At- 

 lantic walrus have been made in several instances ; but of the mature 

 animal, until my drawing, there was nothing extant of that character. 



