458 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



their trust in princes ; hence their independence and good heart. 

 But now it appears that it will not do to put your trust in Eosmarus 

 either. 



I know that it is said by Parry, by Hall, and lately by others, 

 that the flesh of the Atlantic walrus is palatable ; perhaps the nat- 

 ure of its food-supply is the cause. We all recognize a wide differ- 

 ence in pork from hogs fed on corn and those fed on beech- mast 

 and oak-acorns, and those which have lived upon the offal of the 

 slaughtering houses, or have gathered the decayed castings of the 

 sea-shore; the sea-horse of Bering Sea lives upon that which does 

 not give a pleasant flavor to its flesh. 



The range of our Alaskan walrus now appears to be restricted 

 in the Arctic Ocean to an extreme westward at Cape Chelagskoi, on 

 the Siberian coast, and an extreme eastward between Point Barrow 

 and the region of Point Beechey, on the Alaskan shore. It is, how- 

 ever, substantially confined between Koliutchin Bay, Siberia, and 

 Point Barrow, Alaska. As far as its distribution in polar waters is 

 concerned, and how far to the north it travels from these coasts of 

 two continents, I am unable to present any well-authenticated data 

 illustrative of the subject ; the shores of Wrangel Island were found 

 in possession of walrus-herds during the season of 1881. 



This walrus has, however, a very wide range of distribution in 

 Alaska, though not near so great as in prehistoric times. They 

 abound to the eastward and southeastward of St. Paul, over in 

 Bristol Bay, where great numbers congregate on the sand-bars and 

 flats, now flooded, now bared by the rising and ebbing of the tide ; 

 they are hunted here to a considerable extent for their ivory. No 

 morse are found south of the Aleutian Islands ; still, not more than 

 forty-five or fifty years ago, small gatherings of these animals were 

 killed here and there on some islands between Kadiak and Oonimak 

 Pass ; the greatest aggregate of them, south of Bering Straits, will 

 always be found in the estuaries of Bristol Bay and on the north 

 side of the peninsula of Alaska. 



I have been frequently questioned whether, in my opinion, more 

 than a short space of time would elapse ere the walrus was extermi- 

 nated, or not, since our whalers had begun to hunt them in Bering 

 Sea and the Arctic Ocean. To this I frankly make answer that I 

 do not know enough of the subject to give a correct judgment. The 

 walrus spend most of their time in waters that are within reach of 

 these skilful and hardy navigators ; and if they (the walrus) are of 



