ARCTIC WALRTJl.- 
175 
sea in the utmost confusion. And if we did not, 
at the first discharge, kill those we fired at, we 
generally lost them, though mortally wounded. 
They did not appear to us to be that dangerous 
animal which some authors have described ; not 
even when attacked. They are rather more so in 
appearance than in realiy. Vast numbers ot 
them would follow and come close up to the 
boats ; but the flash of a musket in the pan, or 
even the bare pointing one at them, would send 
them down in an instant. The female will defend, 
the young to the very last, and at the expence of 
her own life, whether in the water, or upon the 
ice. Nor will the young one quit the dam, 
though she be dead ; so that if one is killed, 
the other is certain prey. The dam, when in the 
water, holds the young one between her fore 
fins.” 
The Greenlanders, when they find a herd of 
them upon the ice, approach in their boats, and 
fling their harpoons as the alarmed animals are 
tumbling themselves along the steeps of the ice 
into the sea. They seize these opportunities of 
killing them, as the animals always distend their 
skins, to roll with greater ease and lightness, and, 
therefore, are easier to hit than when they are 
at rest on the shore, and the skin is flaccid. 
When playing about in the water, they have 
been frequently observed to draw sea fowl be- 
neath the surface, with their long tusks, and 
after a while to throw them up in the air ; but 
they live Entirely upon marine plants and shell-fish, 
and never eat these. 
This animal appears to have been known to king 
Alfred so early as the year 890, from the informa- 
tion of O ether, the Norwegian, who made a voy- 
age beyond the North Cape of Norway, Cf for the 
more cornmoditie,” says Hakluyt, of fishing of 
