Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/470

446 to make the scratches there observed on the rock. On one of the terraces, at an elevation of a hundred feet, was a well-marked native encampment, with lichen-covered friable bones strewed about. As a rule the Eskimo do not pitch their tents far from the sea-level, and it is therefore not improbable that the land may have risen to the present altitude of the encampment since the date of pitching the tent. The invariable method of the Eskimo is to keep down the sides of their skin-tents by placing stones on the edges. When camp is moved the lent is dragged from underneath them, and the circle of stones remains in these regions a very enduring monument of human labour.

There were a considerable number of Walrus in the bay, generally to be seen in the pools of water over a shoal, or else resting on the floe-ice in the same neighbourhood. On one occasion I crept to within twenty yards of a group of three that were resting on the ice. They were lazy, indolent brutes, basking in the sun, and took little heed of my approach. Every now and again one or other would open its sleepy eyes and rub its neigh- bour's coat; whether that movement was intended as a signal of alarm, or as a good-natured attempt to rid its friend of the parasite, Hematopinus trichechi, which infests the skins of these animals, most especially between the toes of the flippers, I cannot say, but they allowed a boat to get near enough to them to discharge a harpoon gun. The largest of the three was struck, and immediately dived, but came to the surface as soon as it felt a purchase on the line; it then endeavoured to attack the boat, but was soon killed with rifle-bullets. The next day a very large old male was captured by the same means. The length of this animal along the curve of the back from the tip of the nose to the end of the hind flippers was twelve feet six inches; girth before fore-arm eleven feet six inches, immediately behind the fore-arm eleven feet; its tusks measured eighteen and a half inches to the point of insertion in the bone, and we estimated its entire weight at a ton. We ate the liver which was quite palatable, but the flesh, though well tasted, was tough and black. Its stomach contained a large amount of green fluid oil, in which small particles of Ulva latissima could be detected, and minute fragments of the shells of Mya.

A visit to Norman Lockyer Island showed that a large colony of Eskimo must have once inhabited it, for hundreds of walrus- skulls lay around the deserted " igloos," now moss-covered, and