W ALliU S - II 0 i, E S. 
141 
water enough to sport and even sleep in, between 
the fields of drift, as they opened with the tide; but 
they had worked numerous breathing-holes besides, in 
the solid ice nearer shore.* Many of these were in¬ 
side the capes of Rensselaer Harbor. They had the 
same circular, cleanly-finished margin as the seals’, 
but they were in much thicker ice, and the radiating 
WALRUS SPORTING. 
lines of fracture round them much more marked. 
The animal evidently used his own buoyancy as a 
means of starting the ice. 
“Around these holes the ice was much discolored: 
* The walrus often sleeps on the surface of the water while his 
fellows are playing around him. In this condition I frequently sur¬ 
prised the young ones, whose mothers were asleep by their side. 
