R, BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 63 



Norwegian hunters, who visit that island for the purpose. In 

 Danish Greenland, though it was once so abundant that the 

 principal article of trade with Europe, in the days of Erik 

 Raude's colonists, was the tusks of this animal, it may be said 

 nowadays, so far as its hunting or commercial value is con- 

 cerned, to be extinct. There are never more than a few killed 

 yearly, and it frequently happens that a year passes without any 

 at all being killed within the limits of the Danish trading-posts. 

 It is more than probable that they never w^ere abundant in South 

 Greenland, but that the old colonists went north in pursuit of 

 them. From the Runic column found on the island of King- 

 atarsoak in 73° N. lat., we know that these enterprising rovers 

 did sail far north ; and it is more than reasonable to suppose that 

 it was on one of these Walrus-hunting expeditions that this 

 monument w^as erected. Indeed so few are now killed in Danish 

 Greenland (whether through degeneracy of the hunters or scarcity 

 of the Walrus it is scarcely worth inquiring too closely) that as, 

 notwithstanding all the appliances of European civilisation now 

 accessible to the natives, ivory cannot be dispensed with in the 

 manufacture of Eskimo implements of the chase, its tusks have 

 sometimes to be reimported from Europe into Greenland. North 

 of the glaciers of Melville Bay, the hardy Arctic highlanders, aided 

 by no kayak or rifle, but with a manly self-reliance, enfeebled by 

 no bastard civilisation engrafted upon their pristine savagedom, 

 with their harpoon and allunaks still boldly attack the Walrus as 

 he lies huddled upon the ice-foot ; and thereby the native supplies 

 to his family the food and light which make tolerable the darkness 

 of the long Arctic night of Smith's Sound. The whalers kill a 

 few annually, striking them, as they do the Whale, with the gun- 

 harpoon, and killing them with steel lances* ; but even then it is 

 dangerous work, and not unfrequently brings the hunter to grief. 

 I have been one of a party who have killed several in this manner, 

 and have also seen them captured by the wild Eskimo at Pond's 

 Bay, on the western shores of Davis's Strait, after the aboriginal 

 fashion ; but as this has been excellently described by Kanef and 

 HayesJ in their different narratives, I will not trouble you with 

 any details. The Swedish expedition to Spitzbergen,§ and Lord 

 DufFerin|| and Mr. Lamont,^ have given many particulars of its 

 capture by the Spitzbergen hunters. Baron Wrangell** has 

 supplied an account of its chase on different portions of the 

 Siberian coasts ; and Nilsson,f f Keilhau,JJ and Malmgren §§ 



* The ordinary rifle is of comparatively little use in hunting this monster 

 Seal. Musket balls -will scarcely affect their pachydermatous sides ; and I 

 have often seen leaden balls flattened on their skulls. I have more than once 

 seen it snap a steel lance in two with its powerful molars. 



t " Arctic Explorations." 



X " The Open Polar Sea," and " An Arctic Boat Voyage." 



§ " Svenska Expeditionen til Spetsbergen ^r 1861," &c., pp. 168-182. 



II " Letters from High Latitudes." 



% " Seasons with the Sea-horses." 



** Nordkiiste von Sibirien, ii., pp. 319, 320. 



Tf Lib. cit., I, pp, 320-325. 



XX " Reise i Oet-og Vest-Finnmarken, &c., pp. 146-149." 



§§ Wiegmann's Archiv, v., 1864. 



