Here the morse rests upon some rocky, surf-washed tables characteristic of this place without being disturbed; hence the locality afforded me a particularly pleasant and advantageous opportunity of minutely observing these animals. My observations, perhaps, would not have passed over a few moments of general notice, had I found a picture presented by them such as I had drawn in my mind from previous descriptions; the contrary, however, stamping itself so suddenly and decidedly upon my eye, set me to work with pen and brush in noting and portraying such extraordinary brutes, as they lay grunting and bellowing, unconscious of my presence, and not ten feet away from the ledge upon which I sat.[164]
Sitting as I did to the leeward of them, with a strong wind blowing in at the time from seaward, which, ever and anon, fairly covered many of them with foaming surf-spray, therefore they took no notice of me during the three or more hours of my study. I was first astonished at observing the raw, naked appearance of the hide: it was a skin covered with multitudes of pustular-looking warts and large boils or pimples, without hair or fur, save scattered and almost invisible hairs; it was wrinkled in deep, flabby seam-folds, and marked by dark-red venous lines, which showed out in strong contrast through the thicker and thinner yellowish-brown cuticle, that in turn seemed to be scaling off in places as if with leprosy; indeed, a fair expression of this walrus-hide complexion if I may use the term, can be understood by the inspection of those human countenances in the streets and on the highways of our cities which are designated as the faces of “bloats.” The forms of Rosmarus struck my eye at first in a most unpleasant manner, and the longer I looked at them the more heightened was my disgust; for they resembled distorted, mortified, shapeless masses of flesh; those clusters of big, swollen, watery pimples, which were of a yellow, parboiled flesh-color, and principally located over the shoulders and around the necks, painfully suggested unwholesomeness.
On examining the herd individually, and looking upon perhaps one hundred and fifty specimens directly beneath and within the sweep of my observation, I noticed that there were no females among them; they were all males, and some of the younger ones had considerable hair, or enough of that close, short, brown coat to give a hirsute tone to their bodies—hence I believe that it was only the old, wholly matured males which offered to my eyes such bare and loathsome nakedness.
Section showing Construction of Mahlemoöt Winter Houses at Poonook.
I noticed, as they swam around, and before they landed, that they were clumsy in the water, not being able to swim at all like the Phocidæ and the Otariidæ; yet their progress in the sea was wonderfully alert when brought into comparison with that terrestrial action of theirs; the immense bulk and weight of this walrus, contrasted with the size and strength of its limbs, renders it simply impotent when hauled out of the water on those low, rocky beaches or shelves upon which it rests. Like the seals, however, it swims entirely under water when travelling, but it does not rise, in my opinion, so frequently to take breath; when it does, it blows or snorts not unlike a whale. Often have I heard this puffing snort of those animals (since the date of these observations on Walrus Islet), when standing on the bluffs near the village of St. Paul and looking seaward; on one cool, quiet morning in May I followed with my eye and ear a herd of walrus, tracing its progress some distance off and up along the east coast of the island by those tiny jets of moisture or vapor from its confined breath which the animals blew off as they rose to respire.
AN OLD WALRUS, OR “MORSE”
A Life Study, made by the Author, of an aged Male on Walrus Islet. July 5, 1872
Mariners, while coasting in the Arctic, have often been put on timely footing by a walrus fog-horn snorting and blowing as the ship dangerously sails silently through dense fog toward land or ice-floes, upon which those animals may be resting; indeed, these uncouth monitors to this indistinct danger rise and bob under and around a vessel like so many gnomes or demons of fairy romance, and sailors may well be pardoned for much of that strange yarning which they have given to the reading world respecting the sea-horse during the last three centuries.