WALRUS-HUNTING. 133 



likely been driven away by the older males from their more 

 northern haunts. The walruses herd on the lowest edge of 

 the coast which is within reach of the high spring-tides. When 

 the Aleuts prepare to attack the animals, they take leave of 

 each other as if they were going to face death, being no less 

 afraid of the mighty tusks of the walruses than of the awkward- 

 ness of their own companions. Armed with lances and heavy 

 axes, they stealthily approach the walruses, and having disposed 

 their ranks, suddenly fall upon them with loud shouts, and 

 endeavour to drive them from the sea, taking care that none 

 of them escape into the water, as in this case the rest would 

 irresistibly follow and precipitate the huntsmen along with 

 them. As soon as the walruses have been driven far enough 

 up the strand, the Aleuts attack them with their lances, en- 

 deavouring to strike at them in places where the hide is not so 

 thick, and then pressing with all their might against the spear, to 

 render the wound deep and deadly. The slaughtered animals fall 

 one over the other and form large heaps, while the huntsmen, ut- 

 tering furious shouts and intoxicated with carnage, wade through 

 the bloody mire. They then cleave the jaws and take out the 

 tusks, which are the chief objects of the slaughter of several 

 thousands of walruses, since neither their flesh nor their fat 

 is made use of in the colony. Sir George Simpson, in his 

 "Overland Journey Bound the World," relates that the bales 

 of fur sent to Kjachta are covered with walrus hide; then it 

 is made to protect the tea chests, which find their way to 

 Moscow ; and after all these wanderings, the far-travelled skin 

 returns again to its native seas, when, cut into small pieces and 

 stamped with a mark, it serves as a medium of exchange. The 

 carcases of the wholesale slaughter are left on the shore to be 

 washed away by the spring-tides, which soon erase every vestige 

 of the bloody scene, and in the following year the inexhaustible 

 north sends new victims to the coast. 



Kane gives us a vivid description of a walrus himt in Smith's 

 Sound, most likely the most northern point of the earth inhabited 

 by man. " After a while Myouk became convinced, from signs or 

 sounds, that walruses were waiting for him in a small space 

 of recently open water that was glazed over with a few days' 

 growth of ice, and, moving gently on, soon heard the charac- 

 teristic bellow of a bull, — the walrus, like some bipeds, being 



