460 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



The Innuits of St. Lawrence, and all of their race living above 

 them, hunt the walrus without any excitement other than that of 

 securing such quarry. They never speak of real danger. When 

 they do not shoot them as these beasts drift in sleepy herds on ice- 

 floes, then they surprise them on the beaches or reefs and destroy 

 a herd by spearing and lancing. When harpooned or speared, a 

 head of the weapon is so made as to detach itself from its shank, 

 and by thus sticking in the carcass a line of walrus-hide is made fast 

 to the plethoric body of Rosmarus. When this brute has expended 

 its surplus vitality by towing the natives a few miles in a mad, fren- 

 zied burst of swimming, their bidarrah is quietly drawn up to its 

 puffing form close enough to permit of a coup by an ivory-headed 

 lance ; it is then towed to a beach at high water. When the ebb is 

 well out, the huge carcass is skinned by its dusky butchers, who 

 cut it up into large square chunks of flesh and blubber, which are 

 deposited in queer little " Dutch-oven " caches of each family that 

 are made especially for its reception. 



Dressing walrus-hides is the only serious hard labor which 

 the Alaskan Innuit subjects himself to. He cannot lay it entirely 

 upon the women, as the Sioux do when they spread buffalo bodies 

 all over the plains. It is too much for female strength alone, and 

 so the men bear a hand right lustily in this business. It takes from 

 four to six stout natives, when a green walrus-hide is removed, to 

 carry it to a sweating-hole, where it is speedily unhaired. Then, 

 stretched alternately upon air-frames and pinned over the earth, it 

 is gradually scraped down to a requisite thinness for use in cover- 

 ing the bidarrah skeletons, etc. 



There are probably six or seven thousand human beings in 

 Alaska who live largely by virtue of the existence of Bosmarus, and 

 every year, when the season opens, they gather together by settle- 

 ments, as they are contiguous, and discuss the walrus chances for 

 a coming year as earnestly and as wisely as our farmers who con- 

 fer over their prospects for corn and potatoes. But an Eskimo 

 hunter is a sadly improvident mortal, though he is not wasteful of 

 morse life, while we are provident, and yet wasteful of our resources. 



If the North Pole is ever reached by our people, they will do so 

 only when they can eat walrus-meat and get plenty of it at least 

 that is my belief and, knowing now what the diet is, I think the 

 journey to that hyperborean ultima is a long one, though there is 

 plenty of meat and many men who want to try it. 



