448 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



As the walrus came ashore they made no use of their tusks in as- 

 sistance ; but such effort was all done by their fore flippers and the 

 " boosting " of exceptionally heavy surf which rolled in at wide inter- 

 vals, and for which marine assistance the walrus themselves seemed 

 to patiently wait. When moving on land they do not seem to have 

 any real power in the hinder limbs. These are usually pulled and 

 twitched up behind, or feebly flattened out at right angles to its 

 body. Terrestrial progression is slowly and tediously made by a 

 dragging succession of short steps forward on the forefeet ; but if 

 an alarm is given, it is astonishing to note the contrast which they 

 present in their method of getting back to sea : they fairly roll and 

 hustle themselves over and into the waves within an exceedingly 

 short lapse of time. 



When sleeping on drifting ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean, or on 

 rocks at St. Matthew's or Walrus Island, they resort to a very sin- 

 gular method of keeping guard, if I may so term it. In this herd 

 of three or four hundred male walrus that were beneath my vision, 

 though nearly all were sleeping, yet the movement of one would 

 disturb the other, which would raise its head in a stupid manner 

 for a few moments, grunt once or twice, and before lying down to 

 sleep again it would strike the slumbering form of its nearest com- 

 panion with its tusks, causing that animal to rouse up in turn for 

 a few moments also, grunt, and pass the blow on to the next, lying 

 down in the same manner. Thus the word was transferred, as it 

 were, constantly and unceasingly around, always keeping some one 

 or two aroused, which consequently were more alert than the rest. 



On Walrus Island a particularly large individual walrus was se- 

 lected and shot, out of a herd of more than two hundred. This was 

 done at the author's instance, who made the following memoranda : 

 It measured twelve feet seven inches from its bluff nostrils to the 

 tip of its excessively abbreviated tail, which was not more than two 

 and one-half or three inches long ; it had the surprising girth of 

 fourteen feet. An immense mass of blubber on the shoulders and 

 around the neck made the head look strangely small in propor- 

 tion, and the posteriors decidedly attenuated ; indeed, the whole 

 weight of the animal was bound up in its girth anteriorly. It was 

 a physical impossibility for me to weigh this brute, and I therefore 

 can do nothing but make a guess, having this fact to guide me 

 that the head, cut directly off at the junction with the spine, or the 

 occipital or atlas joint, weighed eighty pounds ; that the skin, which 



