FIUST WALEUSES SEEN. 43 



sail-yard, and the men, not unnaturally, are 

 a]3t to neglect this all-important duty ; but in 

 sailing within sight of ice a careful man, with 

 a telescope, ought to be constantly there, be- 

 cause, if the ice is rough, even a large herd of 

 walruses may be in sight one minute and con- 

 cealed by high intervening icebergs the next : 

 the look-out man of course requires to be re- 

 lieved very frequently. 



Shortly after parting with the yacht, our 

 look-out man reported "walruses on the ice," 

 and we had each several chances the same day; 

 but the walruses were all old bulls in small 

 troops of two, three, or four, and so extremely 

 shy that we could not get near enough to 

 harpoon them, and we were advised by the 

 people to refrain from firing at them, as they 

 have a theory that it is almost impossible to 

 shoot a walrus dead, and that it also frightens 

 them and renders them wilder than ever. 

 There is no doubt as to its making them wild, 

 but we soon found out that when a walrus was 

 wild already, the only chance of bringing him 

 to bag was by firing at his head. At first, 

 however, we failed to do much execution, 

 because, at the advice of the harpooners, we 

 waited until all chance of harpooning the 



