LAND AT LAST 407 



floatinsf in our channel. We tried once more to drao- 

 one of them up, but the attempt was as unsuccessful as 

 before. At last we saw that our only course was to skin 

 them in the water; but this was neither an easy nor an 

 agreeable task. Wlien at last, late in the evenino-, we had 

 got one side of one animal skinned, it was low-water; the 

 walrus lay on the bottom, and there was no possibility of 

 turning it over, no matter how we toiled and pulled. We 

 had to wait for high tide the following day, in order to 

 o;et at the other side. 



While we were busy with the walruses that day we 

 suddenly saw the whole fjord white with white whales 

 gambolling all round as far as the eye could see. There 

 was an incredible number of them. In the course of an 

 hour they had entirely disappeared. Where they came 

 from and whither they went I was not able to discover. 



During the succeeding days we toiled at our task of 

 skinning and cutting up the walruses, and bringing all up 

 into a safe place on the beach. It was disgusting work, 

 lying on the animals out in the water and having to cut 

 down as far as one could reach below the surface of the 

 water. We could put up with getting wet, for one gets 

 dry in time; but what was worse was that we could not 

 avoid being saturated with blubber and oil and blood 

 from head to foot; and our poor clothes, that we should 

 have to live in for another year before we could change, 

 fared badly during those days. They so absorbed oil 

 that it went rio-ht throusfh to the skin. This walrus busi- 



