Adventures in Alaska

by Samuel Hall Young

It was not until August eighteenth that we got sight of our first walrus herd, and then for three days we were right in the midst of them. We had been driven by buffeting winds and threatening ice-packs away from the vicinity of the islands far westward along the Siberian coast and were perhaps thirty or forty miles from land. The cry was raised from the "crow's nest": "Walrus!"

The appearance of the herd as we approached it was very unlike anything imagined by those who had not hitherto seen these animals. All sorts of comparisons crowd upon one's imagination when trying to describe them. Some of them look like huge caterpillars and have an exactly similar motion, except that their antennæ are bent downward instead of upward. Sometimes when bunched up they look like immense squirrels. Sometimes when scratching themselves with their flippers they have the languid movements of a fashionable lady fanning herself; and again, when two are sparring at each other, they have the fierce mien of gladiators. But always there is that particularly comical edge about them that impels to irresistible laughter, as when one approaches a cage of monkeys. Their attitudes and motions are so unexpected and ridiculous.

I did little hunting myself but went with the other hunters in the oomiak or large skin boat; and I believe I got more enjoyment than any one else of the party; for I was not doing the killing, and was enjoying equally the misses and the hits of the others and, above all, the study of these huge and interesting brutes. Many of my preconceived notions, obtained by reading and by hearsay, were put to flight during those three or four days.

Only a few years ago a report to the Smithsonian Institute was published in which it was stated that the walrus were very watchful and wary, and that when reposing on the ice-cake they selected a large bull to climb the highest pinnacle and keep watch for foes, and that when he grew weary of his vigil and wished to sleep he would prod the bull next to him with his tusks and let him take his turn while the former watchman took a nap. It was thus inferred that the walrus scanned the region of ice with eagle eyes and had a system of signalling similar to the organized human gunboats or armies.

But this is all nonsense. The fact is that the walrus cannot see more than ten or twelve feet at the most, and even at that distance I doubt whether he can distinguish more than the mere outlines of any object. His eyes are the eyes of a fish, small and rudely constructed and exceptionally nearsighted. They are made for use in the dim depths of the sea. When the sun shines the walrus shut their eyes and apparently cannot open them. When alarmed they rush into the water and then come up and will crowd within five or six feet of the moving-picture man or hunter, bulging their eyes like those of a crab in frantic attempts to see their foe.

We clad ourselves in white muslin parkas, and got our oomiaks or kyaks boldly up under the noses of these great beasts with them staring down upon us. The only thing we had to guard against was their getting our wind. If we kept to leeward of them we were always out of their sight. The strange bulging of the eyes when excited gives a most grotesque appearance to the countenance of these walrus, as ordinarily their eyes are deep sunken in their heads.

Let me sketch a picture from life: It is the twentieth of August. We are in the vicinity of Cape North on the Northern Siberian coast. We are twenty or thirty miles offshore. The day is warm, sunny, still. The ship is tied to a large iceberg; a wilderness of floating ice-cakes stretches in every direction to the horizon. In some places these are massed together; again there will be little open places, and ragged leads, but everywhere ice, ice, ice. And it is all in motion; a slow heaving and grinding of the floe, and the tidal currents moving in different directions and with varied rapidity, but all trending northwest, the landscape—or seascape—changing every minute. There are herds of walrus all around us, some numerous, containing two or three hundred on one cake of ice, others small; here a group of four or five big bulls on a cake just large enough to hold them; then fifteen or twenty on a wider berg with little hummocks, up the slopes of which the big brutes crowd.

Scull and Lovering have taken the kyak-catamaran and are paddling to the nearest bunch of walrus not five hundred yards from the ship. Captain K. has launched the big skin boat, or oomiak, and is perched on the high stern, steering. His aeroscope moving-picture machine and graphlex camera, his field-glass and rifle are by him. "Eskimo Prank" and I are in front of him with our paddles; while Dr. Elting and Collins are in the bow, with paddles in their hands and their big Ross and Mannlicher rifles close by. We corkscrew our way through the ice, steering past a bunch of walrus on a small cake. "Small ice—lose um quick," says Prank. We are heading to a herd of twenty or thirty, with some big tuskers among them. We keep to the leeward of them, for the sense of smell seems to be their one keen sense, and even that does not compare in acuteness with the nose of the polar bear or the caribou.

Captain K. and "Eskimo Prank" are the only ones in our party who are perfectly calm and unexcited, and they seem to the rest of us rash and careless. The boat is steered right in sight of the herd, and we are getting close to them. Now the big, ugly heads of five or six which have been digging clams come up right alongside of us. Suddenly their heads rise high out of the water and their sunken eyes bulge out as they stare up into our faces. It takes a whole minute's scrutiny to satisfy them that we are enemies, and they go down with great splashing and blowing to come up again almost in the same place and stare at us again. So we are escorted up to the edge of the ice-cake on which the herd reposes. As a precaution against discovery we list the oomiak so that its side protects us from their sight.

We range alongside the cake; "Prank" and I hold it steady by clutching spurs of ice. The captain with his picture machines, and the hunters with their guns crawl out on the ice. They are clad in white parkas—but there is plenty to see about them in all conscience, and they make plenty of noise. We are only twenty or thirty feet from the nearest walrus. Two or three big bulls are on the hummock right above us. The captain and the hunters maneuver about, cautiously but sometimes in plain sight, and discuss, in voices clearly audible three times the distance, the question as to which have the best tusks, which lie most favorably for a good shot, in which hump of the neck the brain lies and just where to shoot. The captain gets his bulky aeroscope placed and sets the engine to buzzing and clacking. The hunters are waiting for the beasts to turn just right so as to expose the brain. For the brain of a walrus is as small as that of a rhinoceros in proportion to its size—about as big as one's two fists,—and you must know just where it is, and place your ball right through it, or your game will flop and flounder in his dying struggles and roll into the sea and you'll lose him. Hence the nervous care and uncertainty of the hunters. For ten or fifteen minutes we wait for the chance, the favorable moment.