Its tusks, or canines, are set firmly under the nostril-apertures in deep, massive, bony pockets, giving that strange, broad, square-cut front of the muzzle so characteristic of its physiognomy.
The upper lips of this walrus of Bering Sea are exceedingly thick and gristly, and its bluff, square muzzle is studded, in regular rows and intervals, with a hundred or so, short, stubby, gray-white bristles, varying in length from one-half to three inches. There are a few very short and much softer bristles set, also, on the fairly hidden chin of its lower jaw, which closes up under a projecting snout and muzzle, and is nearly concealed by the enormous tushes, when laterally viewed.
The thickness of the skin of the walrus is a marked and most anomalous feature. I remember well how surprised I was, when I followed the incision of a broad-axe used in beheading the specimen shot for my benefit, to find that the skin over its shoulders and around the throat and chest was three inches thick—a puffy, spongy epidermis, outwardly hateful to the sight, and inwardly resting upon a slightly acrid fat or blubber so peculiar to this animal. Nowhere was that hide, upon the thinnest point of measurement, less than half an inch thick. It feeds exclusively upon shell-fish (Lamellibranchiata), or clams principally, and also upon the bulbous roots and tender stalks of certain marine plants and grasses which grow in great abundance over the bottoms of broad, shallow lagoons and bays of the main Alaskan coast. I took from the paunch of the walrus above mentioned more than a bushel of crushed clams in their shells, all of which that animal had evidently just swallowed, for digestion had scarcely commenced. Many of those clams in that stomach, large as my clinched hands, were not even broken; and it is in digging this shell-fish food that the services rendered by its enormous tusks become apparent.[165]
I am not in accord with some singular tales told, on the Atlantic side, about the uses of these gleaming ivory teeth, so famous and conspicuous: I believe that the Alaskan walrus employs them solely in his labor of digging clams and rooting bulbs from those muddy oozes and sand-bars in the estuary waters peculiar to his geographical distribution. Certainly, it is difficult for me to reconcile my idea of such uncouth, timid brutes, as were those spread before me on Walrus Islet, with any of the strange chapters written as to the ferocity and devilish courage of a Greenland “morse.” These animals were exceedingly cowardly, abjectly so. It is with the greatest difficulty that the natives, when a herd of walruses are surprised, can get a second shot at them. So far from clustering in attack around their boats, it is the very reverse, and a hunter’s only solicitude is which way to travel in order that he may come up with the fleeing animals as they rise to breathe.
On questioning the natives, as we returned, they told me that the walrus of Bering Sea was monogamous, and that the difference between the sexes in size, color, and shape is inconsiderable; or, in other words, that until the males are old the young males and the females of all ages are not remarkably distinct, and would not be at all if it were not for their teeth. They said that the female brings forth her young, a single calf, in June usually, on the ice-floes in the Arctic Ocean, above Bering Straits, between Point Barrow and Cape Seartze Kammin; that this calf resembles the parent in general proportions and color when it is hardly over six weeks old, but that the tusks (which give it its most distinguishing expression) are not visible until the second year of its life; that the walrus mother is strongly attached to her offspring, and nurses it later through the season in the sea; that the walrus sleeps profoundly in the water, floating almost vertically, with barely more than the nostrils above water, and can be easily approached, if care is taken as to the wind, so as to spear it or thrust a lance into its bowels; that the bulls do not fight as savagely as the fur-seal or the sea-lion; that the blunted tusks of these combatants seldom do more than bruise their thick hides; that they can remain under water nearly an hour, or about twice as long as the seals, and that they sink like so many stones immediately after being shot at sea.
I personally made no experiments touching the peculiarity of sinking immediately after being shot. Of course, on reflection, it will appear to any mind that all seals, no matter how fat or how lean, would sink instantly out of sight, if not killed, at the shock of a bullet; even if mortally wounded, the great involuntary impulse of brain and muscle would be to dive and speed away, for all swimming is submarine when pinnipeds desire to travel.
Touching this mooted question, I had an opportunity when in Port Townsend, during 1874, to ask a man who had served as a partner in a fur-sealing schooner off the Straits of Fuca. He told me that unless a seal was instantly killed by the passage of his rifle-bullet through its brain, it was never secured, and would sink before they could reach the bubbling wake of its disappearance. If, however, the aim of a marksman had been correct, then its body was invariably taken within five to ten minutes after the rifle discharge. Only one man does the shooting; the rest of such a crew, ten to twelve white men and Indians, man canoes and boats which are promptly despatched from the schooner, after each report, in the direction of a victim. How long one of the bodies of these “clean” killed seals would float he did not know; the practice always was to get it as quickly as possible, fearing that the bearings of its position, when shot from a schooner, might be confused or lost. He also affirmed that, in his opinion, there were not a dozen men on the whole northwest coast who were good enough with a rifle, and expert at distance calculation, to shoot fur-seals successfully from the deck of a vessel on the ocean. The Indians of Cape Flattery do most of their pelagic fur-sealing by cautiously approaching from the leeward when these animals are asleep, and then throw line-darts or harpoons into them before they awaken.
The finest bidarrah skin-boats of transportation that I have seen in this country were those of the St. Lawrence natives. These were made out of dressed walrus-hides, shaved and pared down by them to the requisite thickness, so that when they were sewed with sinews to the wooden whalebone-lashed frames of such boats they dried into a pale greenish-white prior to oiling, and were even then almost translucent, tough and strong.
When I stepped, for the first time, into the baidar of St. Paul Island, and went ashore, from the Alexander, over a heavy sea, safely to the lower bight of Lukannon Bay, my sensations were of emphatic distrust; the partially water-softened skin-covering would puff up between the wooden ribs, and then draw back, as the waves rose and fell, so much like an unstable support above the cold, green water below, that I frankly expressed my surprise at such an outlandish craft. My thoughts quickly turned to a higher appreciation of those hardy navigators who used these vessels in circumpolar seas years ago, and of the Russians who, more recently, employed bidarrahs chiefly to explore Alaskan and Kamchatkan terræ incognita. There is an old poem in Avitus, written by a Roman as early as 445 A.D.; it describes the ravages of Saxon pirates along the southern coasts of Britain, who used just such vessels as this bidarrah of St Paul.
“Quin et armoricus piratim Saxona tractus