89 
Ferocity of the Walrus. 
Thomas James, of Bristol!” The letter is dated the 14th 
of September, 1591, and announces the discovery of the 
Isle of Ramea by two small ships of Saint Malo, one of 
which was taken as a prize by a ship of which James was 
part owner ( Hakluyt , vol. iii. p. 238). 
According to Olaus Magnus the walrus was a formid¬ 
able antagonist of the whale, and occasionally of human 
beings :— 
“ The Norway coast, toward the more northern parts, hath huge 
great fish as big as elephants, which are called morsi, or rosmari, may 
be they are so called from their sharp biting; for if they see any man 
on the sea-shore, and can catch him, they come suddenly upon him, 
and rend him with their teeth, that they will kill him in a trice. 
Therefore, these fish called rosmari, or morsi, have heads fashioned 
like to an oxes, and a hairy skin, and hair growing as thick as straw or 
corn-reeds, that lye loose very largely.” (Page 231.) 
The Norwegian word, rosmar, signifies a sea-horse. Not¬ 
withstanding its size and formidable appearance the 
walrus is not the ferocious animal here described. It will 
not attack man unprovoked, and only uses its teeth when 
driven to extremities. The walrus is probably the same 
as the rosmarine mentioned by Spenser in his list of 
marine monsters. 
Jonas Poole, in an account of a voyage to Cherie 
Island, in the North Seas, chronicles the capture of a 
young walrus, and its safe conduct to London. 
“The twelfth day [July, 1608] we took into our ship two young 
morses, male and female, alive: the female died before w T e came into 
England, the male lived above ten weekes. The twentieth of August 
wee arrived at London ; and having dispatched some private businesse, 
we brought our living young morse to the court, where the king and 
many honourable personages beheld it with admiration for the strange- 
nesse of the same, the like whereof had never before beene seene alive 
in England. Not long after it fell sicke and died. As the beast in 
shape is very strange, so is it of strange docilitie, and apt to be 
taught, as by good experience we often proved.” ( Purchas , vol. iii. 
p. 560.) 
