Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/118

86, looked at us in the manner here represented and plunged into the water; I fired, and though at too great a distance to kill, yet the shot certainly hit it, for it went bleeding to the edge of the water, as we saw by the blood which it left on the snow.



The walrus has been known to attain the length of eighteen feet, and the girth of twelve or thirteen. The head of this hideous animal is small, and so connected to the neck, that it appears to be a continuation of it; the eyes are small, and sunk into the head; the lips fat, and beset with long stout bristles; the skin, which is about an inch thick, hangs in folds or wrinkles, particularly about the neck, and is covered with short bristly hair, of a dirty yellow or greenish colour; the legs are short and the feet are like those of a seal. Walruses are very numerous about Spitzbergen, and are sometimes seen collected in groups, on pieces of floating ice, where they lie huddled together grunting like swine, or rolling about; the whole group sometimes