MORSE AND MAHLEMOOT. 



459 



sufficient value to a whaler, he can and undoubtedly will make a 

 business of killing them, and work the same sad result that he has 

 brought about with the mighty schools of cetacea which once 

 whistled and bared their backs, throughout the now deserted waters 

 of Bering Sea, in peiiect peace and seclusion prior to 1842. The 

 returns of the old Russian America Company show that an annual 

 average of ten thousand walrus have been slain by the Eskimo since 

 1799 to 1867. There are a great many left yet ; but, unless the oil 

 of Rosmarus becomes very precious commercially, I think the shoal 

 waters of Bi'istol Bay and Kuskokvim mouth, together with the ec- 



The Death-stroke. 

 [Mahletnoots Morse-hunting in the summer.^ 



centric tides thereof, will preserve the species indefinitely. Forty 

 years ago, when the North Pacific was a rendezvous of the greatest 

 whaling-fleet that ever floated, those vessels could not, nor can they 

 now, appi-oach nearer than sixty or even eighty miles of many 

 muddy shoals, sands, and bars upon which the walrus rest in Bris- 

 tol Bay, scattered in herds of a dozen or so to bodies of thousands, 

 living in lethargic peace and almost unmolested, except in several 

 small districts which are carefully hunted over by the natives of 

 Oogashik for oil and ivory. I have been credibly informed that 

 they also breed in Bristol Bay, and along its coast as far north as 

 Cape Avinova, during seasons of exceptional rigor in the Arctic. 



