152 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
has been the walrus, but it too is in course of being extirpated. 
It is now seldom found during summer on the west coast of 
Novaya Zemlya south of Matotschkin Schar. During our visits 
to that island in 1875, 1876, and 1878 we did not see one of 
these animals. But in the Kara Gate, on the east coast of 
Novaya Zemlya, and at certain places in the Kara Sea, abundant 
hunting is still to be had. Earlier in the year the walrus is also 
to be met with among the drift-ice on the west coast, and to the 
south, off the mouth of the Petchora, although the number of 
the animals that are captured by the Samoyeds at Chabarova 
appears to be exceedingly small. On the other hand the Dutch, 
in their first voyages hither, saw a considerable number of 
these gregarious animals. The walrus, however, did not then 
occur here in such abundance as they did at the same time on 
Spitzbergen and Bear Island, which evidently formed their 
principal haunts. 
During Stephen Bennet’s third voyage to Bear Island in 1606, 
700 to 800 walruses were killed there in six hours, and in 1608 
nearly 1,000 in seven hours. The carcases left lying on the 
beach attracted bears thither in such numbers that, for instance, 
in 1609 nearly fifty of them were killed by the crew of a single 
vessel. At one place eighteen bears were seen at once (Purchas, 
iii. p. 560). A Norwegian skipper was still able during a 
wintering in 1824-25 to kill 677 walruses. But when Tobiesen 
wintered there in 1865-66 he killed only a single walrus, and 
on the two occasions of my landing there I did not see one. 
Formerly the hunters almost every year, during late autumn 
when the drift-ice had disappeared, found “ walrus on land,” i.e, 
herds of several hundred walruses which had crept up on some 
low, even, sandy beach, to pass days and weeks there in an 
almost motionless state. During this period of rest most of 
them appear to be sunk in deep sleep, yet not all, for—according 
to the concurrent statements of all the walrus-hunters with 
whom I have conversed on this subject—-they keep a watch to 
