WALRUS -HUNTING. 
131 
The Esquimaux approach them then over the young 
ice, and assail them in cracks and holes with nalegeit 
and line. This fishery, as the season grows colder, 
darker, and more tempestuous, is fearfully hazardous: 
scarcely a year passes without a catastrophe. It was 
the theme of happy augury last winter, that no lives 
had been lost for some months before, and the angelcoks 
even ventured to prophesy from it that the hunt would 
be auspicious,—a prophecy, like some others, hazarded 
after the event, for the ice had continued open for the 
walrus till late in December. 
With the earliest spring, or, more strictly, about a 
month after the reappearance of the sun, the winter 
famine is generally relieved. January and February 
are often, in fact nearly always, months of privation; 
but during the latter part of March the spring fishery 
commences. Every thing is then life and excitement. 
The walrus is now taken in two ways. Sometimes 
he has risen by the side of an iceberg, where the cur¬ 
rents have worn away the floe, or through a tide-crack, 
and, enjoying the sunshine too long, finds his retreat 
cut off by the freezing up of the opening; for, like the 
seal at its attuk, the walrus can only work from below. 
When thus caught, the Esquimaux, who with keen 
hunter-craft are scouring the floes, scent him out by 
their dogs and spear him. 
The early spring is the breeding-season, and the 
walrus then are in their glory. My observations show 
that they tenant the region throughout the entire year; 
but at this time the femal£, with her calf, is accompa- 
