160 franklin's encampment. 
tion or purposes, that the vacant water-spaces around 
us at this time were teeming with animal life. After 
passing Beechy, we saw seal disporting in great flocks, 
rising out of the water as high as their middle, like 
boys in swimming; the white whale, the first we 
had seen, to the extent of thirty-eight separate shoals ; 
the narwhal, or sea-unicorn ; and, finally, that marine 
pachyderm, the tusky walrus. These last were always 
crowded on small tongues of ice, whose purity they 
marred not a little — grim-looking monsters, reminding 
me of the stage hobgoblins, something venerable and 
semi-Egyptian withal. We passed so close as to have 
several shots at them. They invariably rose after 
plunging, and looked snortingly around, as if to make 
fight. Polar bears were numerous beyond our previous 
experience, and the Arctic fox and hare abounded. If 
we add to these the crowding tenants of the air, the 
Brent goose, which now came in great cunoid flocks 
from the north and north by east, the loons, the mol- 
lemokes, and the divers, we may form an estimate of 
the means of human subsistence in these seas. 
