FOOTNOTES:
[163] Captain F. W. Beechey H. M. S. Blossom, voyage 1825-28, inclusive. The seasons of 1826 and 1827 were passed in these waters. Murdoch, who passed the winters of 1881-83, inclusive, here, has given an interesting résumé of the natural history, etc., of the spot. Beechey’s account of the people and country are confirmed by him.
[164] These favored basaltic tables are also commented upon in similar connection by an old writer in 1775, Shuldham, who calls them “echouries;” he is describing the Atlantic walrus as it appears at the Magdalen Islands: “The echouries are formed principally by nature, being a gradual slope of soft rock, with which the Magdalen Islands abound, about eighty to one hundred yards wide at the water-side, and spreading so as to contain, near the summit, a very considerable number.” The tables at Walrus Island and those at Southwest Point are very much less in area than those described by Shuldham, and are a small series of low, saw-tooth jetties of the harder basalt, washed in relief, from a tufa matrix; there is no room to the landward of them for many walruses to lie upon. The Odobœnus does not like to haul up on loose or shingly shores, because it has the greatest difficulty in getting a solid hold for its fore flippers with which to pry up and move ahead its huge, clumsy body. When it hauls on a sand-beach, it never attempts to crawl out to the dry region back of the surf, but lies just awash, at high water. In this fashion they used to rest all along the sand-reaches of St. Paul prior to the Russian advent in 1786-87; and when Shuldham was inditing his letters on the habits of Rosmarus, Odobœnus was then lying out in full force and great physical peace on the Pribylov Islands.
[165] It is, and always will be, a source of sincere regret to me and my friends that I did not bodily preserve this huge paunch and its contents. It would have filled a half-barrel very snugly, and then its mass of freshly swallowed clams (Mya truncata), filmy streaks of macerated kelp, and fragments of crustaceans, could have been carefully examined during a week of leisure at the Smithsonian Institution. It was, however, ripped open so quickly by one of the Aleutes, who kicked the contents out, that I hardly knew what had been done ere the strong-smelling subject was directly under my nose. The natives then were anxious that I should hurry through with my sketches, measurements, etc., so that they might the sooner push off their egg-laden bidarrah and cross back to the main island before the fogs would settle over our homeward track, or the rapidly rising wind shift to the northward and imperil our passage. Weighty reasons these, which so fully impressed me, that this unique stomach of a carnivora was overlooked and left behind; hence, with the exception of curiously turning over the clams (especially those uncrushed specimens), which formed the great bulk of its contents, I have no memoranda or even distinct recollection of the other materials that were incorporated.