Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

When a walrus-herd comes ashore, after short preliminary surveys of the intended spot of landing, an old veteran usually takes the lead of a band which is so disposed.

Finally the first one makes a landing, and no sooner gets composed upon the rocks for sleep than a second one comes along, prodding and poking with its blunted tusks, demanding room also, thus causing the first to change its position to another location still farther off and up from the water, a few feet beyond; then the second is in turn treated in the same way by a third, and so on until hundreds will be slowly packed together on the shore as thickly as they can lie—never far back from the surf, however—pillowing their heads upon the bodies of one another: and, they do not act at all quarrelsome toward each other. Occasionally, in their lazy, phlegmatic adjusting and crowding, the posteriors of some old bull will be lifted up, and remain elevated in the air, while the passive owner continues to sleep, with its head, perhaps, beneath the pudgy form of its neighbor.

These pinnipeds are, perhaps, of all animals, the most difficult subjects that an artist can find to reproduce from life. There are no angles or elbows to seize hold of. The lines of body and limbs are all rounded, free and flowing; yet, the very fleshiest examples never have that bloated, wind-distended look which most of the published figures give them. One must first become familiarized with the restless, varying attitudes of these creatures by extended personal contact and observation ere he can satisfy himself with the result of his drawings, no matter how expert he may be in rapid and artistic delineation. Life-studies by artists of the young of the Atlantic walrus have been made in several instances; but of the mature animal, until my drawing, there was nothing extant of that character.

As the walrus came ashore they made no use of their tusks in assistance; but such effort was all done by their fore flippers and the “boosting” of exceptionally heavy surf which rolled in at wide intervals, and for which marine assistance the walrus themselves seemed to patiently wait. When moving on land they do not seem to have any real power in the hinder limbs. These are usually pulled and twitched up behind, or feebly flattened out at right angles to its body. Terrestrial progression is slowly and tediously made by a dragging succession of short steps forward on the fore-feet; but if an alarm is given, it is astonishing to note the contrast which they present in their method of getting back to sea: they fairly roll and hustle themselves over and into the waves within an exceedingly short lapse of time.

When sleeping on drifting ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean, or on rocks at St. Matthew’s or Walrus Island, they resort to a very singular method of keeping guard, if I may so term it. In this herd of three or four hundred male walrus that were beneath my vision, though nearly all were sleeping, yet the movement of one would disturb the other, which would raise its head in a stupid manner for a few moments, grunt once or twice, and before lying down to sleep again it would strike the slumbering form of its nearest companion with its tusks, causing that animal to rouse up in turn for a few moments also, grunt, and pass the blow on to the next, lying down in the same manner. Thus the word was transferred, as it were, constantly and unceasingly around, always keeping some one or two aroused, which consequently were more alert than the rest.

On Walrus Island a particularly large individual walrus was selected and shot, out of a herd of more than two hundred. This was done at the author’s instance, who made the following memoranda: It measured twelve feet seven inches from its bluff nostrils to the tip of its excessively abbreviated tail, which was not more than two and one-half or three inches long; it had the surprising girth of fourteen feet. An immense mass of blubber on the shoulders and around the neck made the head look strangely small in proportion, and the posteriors decidedly attenuated; indeed, the whole weight of the animal was bound up in its girth anteriorly. It was a physical impossibility for me to weigh this brute, and I therefore can do nothing but make a guess, having this fact to guide me—that the head, cut directly off at the junction with the spine, or the occipital or atlas joint, weighed eighty pounds; that the skin, which I carefully removed with the aid of these natives, with the head, weighed five hundred and seventy pounds. Deducting the head and excluding the flippers, I think it is safe to say that the skin itself would not weigh less than three hundred and fifty pounds, and the animal could not weigh much less than a ton, from two thousand to two thousand two hundred pounds.

The head had a decidedly flattened appearance, for the nostrils, eyes, and ear-spots seem to be placed nearly on top of the cranium. The nasal apertures are literally so, opening directly over the muzzle. They are oval, and closed parallel with the longitudinal axis of the skull, and when dilated are about an inch in their greatest diameter.

The eyes are small, but prominent; placed nearly on top of the head, and, protruding from their sockets, they bulge like those of a lobster. The iris and pupil of this eye is less than one-fourth of its exposed surface; the sclerotic coat swells out from under the lids when they are opened, and is of a dirty, mottled coffee-yellow and brown, with an occasional admixture of white; the iris itself is light-brown, with dark-brown rays and spots. I noticed that whenever the animal roused itself, instead of turning its head, it only rolled its eyes, seldom moving the cranium more than to elevate it. The eyes seem to move, rotating in every direction when the creature is startled, giving the face of this monster a very extraordinary attraction, especially when studied by an artist. The expression is just indescribable. The range of sight enjoyed by the walrus out of water, I can testify, is not well developed, for, after throwing small chips of rock down upon the walruses near me, several of them not being ten feet distant, and causing them only to stupidly stare and give vent to low grunts of astonishment, I then rose gently and silently to my feet, standing boldly up before them; but then, even, I was not noticed, though their eyes rolled all over from above to under me. Had I, however, made a little noise, or had I been standing as far as one thousand yards away from them to the windward, they would have taken the alarm instantly, and tumbled off into the sea like so many hustled wool-sacks, for their sense of smell is of the keen, keenest.

The ears of the walrus, or rather the auricles to the ears, are on the same lateral line at the top of the head with the nostrils and eyes, the latter being just midway between. The pavilion, or auricle, is a mere fleshy wrinkle or fold, not at all raised or developed; and from what I could see of the meatus externus it was very narrow and small; still, the natives assured me that the Otariidæ had no better organs of hearing than Rosmarus.

The head of the male walrus, to which I have alluded, and from which I afterward removed the skin, was eighteen inches long between the nostrils and the post-occipital region; and, although its enormous tusks seemed to be firmly planted in their osseous sockets, judge of my astonishment when one of the younger natives flippantly struck a tusk with a wooden club quite smartly, and then easily jerked the tooth forth. I had frequently observed that it was difficult to keep such teeth from rattling out of their alveoli in any of the best skulls I had gathered of the fur seals and sea-lions, especially difficult in the case of the latter.