56 
D O G S-W ALKU S-N A R17HAL. 
board, the majority of whom, might rather he charac¬ 
terized as ‘ravening wolves.’ To feed this famity, 
upon whose strength our progress and success depend, 
is really a difficult matter. The absence of shore or 
land ice to the south in Baffin’s Bay has prevented 
our rifles from contributing any material aid to our 
commissariat. Our two bears lasted the cormorants 
but eight days; and to feed them upon the meagre 
allowance of two pounds of raw flesh every other day 
is an almost impossible necessity. Only yesterday 
they were ready to eat the caboose up, for I would 
not give them pemmican. Corn meal or beans, which 
Penny’s dogs fed on, they disdain to touch; and salt 
junk would kill them. 
“Accordingly, I started out this morning to hunt 
walrus, with which the Sound is teeming. We saw at 
least fifty of these dusky monsters, and approached 
many groups within twenty paces. But our rifle-balls 
revei’berated from their hides like cork pellets from a 
pop-gun target, and we could not get within harpoon 
distance of one. Later in the day, however, Olilsen, 
climbing a neighboring hill to scan the horizon and 
see if the ice had slackened, found the dead carcass of 
a narwhal or sea-unicorn: a happy discovery, which 
has secured for us at least six hundred pounds of good 
fetid wholesome flesh. The length of the narwhal was 
fourteen feet, and his process, or ‘ horn,’ from the tip 
to its bony encasement, four feet—hardly half the size 
of the noble specimen I presented to the Academy of 
Natural Sciences after my last cruise. (11) We built a fire 
