POLAR BEARS.POLAR BEARS.Drawn by G Mützel of Berlin.
The bear on the other hand has a special fancy for taking an inventory of depôts of provisions, of abandoned vessels, or of boats that have been left drawn up on the beach. Most Arctic travellers have remarkable adventures to relate, which bothmen and bears have gone through on such occasions. During our expedition in 1864, for instance, a large bear came and closely examined the contents of a boat covered with a tent, which we had left unwatched for a few hours at the bottom of Stor Fjord. He ate up a carefully-cooked reindeer roast, tore the reserve clothes, scattered about the ship-biscuit, &c.; and after we had returned in the evening, gathered our things together in a heap, closed the tent and lain down to sleep, the same bear returned, and, while we slept, appropriated all the reindeer beef we had cooked to be used, in place of the roast we had lost, during the following day's journey. During one of the English expeditions in search of Franklin, there was killed on one occasion, a bear in whose stomach there was found, among many other articles, the stock of sticking-plaster from a neighbouring depôt. The bear can also roll away very large stones, but a layer of frozen sand is too much for him.
The Polar bear swims exceedingly well, but not so fast as that he can escape in this way, if he be pursued in a boat; if a boat and stout rowers are at hand he is accordingly done for, if, as often happens, he in attempting to escape seeks his deliverance in the sea. There, he is, as the hunters say, "as easy to kill as a sheep," but one has to make haste to get hold of the killed animal with a harpoon or in some other way, for it speedily sinks, unless it is very fat.
The walrus-hunting vessels from Tromsoe brought home in 1868 twenty, in 1869 fifty-three, in 1870 ninety-eight, in 1871 seventy-four, and in 1872 thirty-three bears. It may be inferred from this that the Norwegian walrus-hunters kill yearly on an average at least a hundred bears. It is remarkable that in this large number a pregnant female or one with newly-born young is never found.[68]The female bear appears to keep herself wellconcealed during the time she is pregnant; perhaps in some ice-hole in the interior of the country.
Whether the Polar bear hibernates during winter is not quite settled; various facts, however, point in this direction. For instance, he disappears almost completely from wintering stations during the dark time, and holes have sometimes been met with in which bears were concealed. Thus it once happened to Tobiesen that he went down with one foot into such a hole, to the no small dismay not only of the experienced walrus-hunter, but also of the bear.
It is also stated that the bear during the dark time goes to the edge of the ice to seek his food. I cannot say positively whether this is the case or not; but the fact points in an opposite direction, that while only a single bear was seen in the course of the winter in the open water in the neighbourhood of our winter station at Mussel Bay in 1872-73, Palander and I almost daily saw bears on the hard frozen sea north of North East Land. Tracks of bears were visible there in all directions on the ice, and along with them light, sinuous traces of the fox. There were, on the other hand, no seal holes to be found, and it was accordingly difficult to understand wherefore the bears had chosen just this desolate stretch of ice as their haunt. The bears that were killed were besides uncommonly lean, the fat which they yielded being scarcely available as fuel for the sledge-party's cooking apparatus.
During their extended excursions after prey the male and the female, the latter generally attended by one or two large young ones, keep each other company. Larger numbers are seldom seen together, unless at places where a good many carcases of walruses, seals, or white fish are lying.
In former times the sight of a bear created great dismay in Polar travellers, but now the walrus-hunters do not hesitate a moment to attack, lance in hand, a large number of bears. They have sometimes in this way killed as many as twelvewithin a short time. They depend less on the gun. During the expedition of 1861 Carl Chydenius shot three in a few minutes, close to his tent-covered boat.
I do not know a single case in which any Norwegian walrus-hunter has been seriously wounded by a bear. It appears, however, as if this animal were bolder and more dangerous in regions where he has not made acquaintance with man's dangerous hunting implements. During the first English and Dutch voyages to Novaya Zemlya, bears were met with at nearly every place where a landing was effected, in regions where the Polar bear is now wholly absent, and the travellers were compelled to undertake actual combats—combats which cost several human lives. During Barents' second voyage some men on the 26th/16th September, 1593, landed on the mainland near the eastern mouth of Yugor Schar, in order to collect "a sort of diamonds occurring there" (valueless rock crystals), when a large white bear, according to De Veer, rushed forward and caught one of the stone collectors by the neck. On the man screaming "Who seizes me by the neck?" a comrade standing beside answered, "A bear," and ran off. The bear immediately bit asunder the head of his prey, and sucked the blood. The rest of the men who were on land now came to his relief, attacking the bear with levelled guns and lances. But the bear was not frightened, but rushed forward and laid hold of a man in the rank of the attacking party, and killed him too, whereupon all the rest took to flight. Assistance now came from the vessel, and the bear was surrounded by thirty men, but against their will, because they had to do with a "grim, undaunted, and greedy beast." Of these thirty men only three ventured to attack the bear, whom these "courageous" men finally killed, after a rather severe struggle.
A large number of occurrences of a similar nature, though commonly attended with fortunate results, are to be found recorded in most of the narratives of Arctic travel. Thusa sailor was once carried off from a whaler caught in the ice in Davis' Straits, and in 1820, among the drift-ice in the sea between Greenland and Spitzbergen, the same fate was like to befall one of the crew of a Hull whaler; but he succeeded in effecting his escape by taking to flight, and throwing to the bear, first his only weapon of defence, a lance, and then his articles of clothing, one after the other.[69]On the 6th of March 1870, Dr. Boergen was attacked by a bear, and dragged a considerable distance.[70]It is remarkable that the bear did not this time either kill his prey, but that he had time to cry out, "A bear is dragging me away;" and that, after the bear had dragged him several hundred yards and he had got free, he could, though very badly scalped, himself make his way back to the vessel. The scalping had been done by the bear attempting to crush the skull in its mouth, as it is accustomed to do to the seals it catches. Scoresby considers it dangerous to hunt the Polar bear in deep snow. The well-known Dane, C. Petersen, guide to McClintock, Kane and others, on the other hand, considered it as little dangerous to attack a bear as to slaughter a sheep. The Siberian traveller, Hedenström, says that a man may venture to do so with a knife tied to a walking-stick, and the Norwegian hunters, or at least the Norwegian-Finnish harpooners, express themselves in much the same way regarding "this noble and dangerous" sport.
The bear's principal food consists of the seal and walrus. It is said that with a single stroke of his powerful paw he can cast a walrus up on the ice. On the other hand he seldom succeeds in catching the reindeer, because it is fleeter than the bear. I have, however, in North East Land, on two occasions, seen blood and hair of reindeer which had been caught by bears. There is not the least doubt that, along with flesh, the bear alsoeats vegetable substances, as seaweed, grass, and lichens. I have several times, on examining the stomach of a bear that had been shot, found in it only remains of vegetable substances; and the walrus-hunters know this so well that they called a large old Polar bear, which Dr. Théel shot at Port Dickson in 1875, "an old Land-king" that was too fat to go a hunting, and therefore ate grass on land. He makes use besides of food of many different kinds; a bear, for instance, in the winter 1865-66 consumed for Tobiesen the contents of two barrels of salt fish, which he had left behind in a deserted hut.
The flesh of the bear, if he is not too old or has not recently eaten rotten seal-flesh, is very eatable, being intermediate in taste between pork and beef. The flesh of the young bear is white and resembles veal. The eating of the liver causes sudden illness.
Although, as already mentioned, the Polar bear sometimes drifts to land and is killed in the northernmost part of Norway, his skin is not enumerated by Othere among the products of Finmark. It thus appears to have become known in Europe first after the Norwegians' discovery of Iceland and Greenland, and was at first considered an extraordinary rarity. A Norwegian of importance, who had emigrated to Iceland, and there succeeded in getting hold of a female bear with two young, sent them in 880 to the King of Norway, and got in return a small vessel laden with wood. This animal had not then been seen in Norway before. The old sagas of the north are said to relate further that the priest Isleif, in order to be nominated bishop of Iceland, in the year 1056 presented a white bear to Kejsar Henrik. In the year 1064 the King of Denmark gave in exchange for a white bear from Greenland a well-equipped, full rigged, trading vessel, a considerable sum of money, and a valuable gold ring.[71]
Marco Polo also says in his account of the country of thepeace-loving nomad Tatar tribes living in the north, that there are to be found there white bears most of them twenty hands long, large black foxes, wild asses (reindeer), and a little animal called "rondes," from which we get the sable fur.[72]As the Polar bear is only to be found on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, these statements prove that in the thirteenth century the northernmost part of Asia was inhabited or at least visited by hunters. Olaus Magnus even describes the bear's mode of life not incorrectly,
POLAR BEARS.POLAR BEARS.After Olaus Magnus (1555).
with the addition that it was customary to present their skins to the altars of cathedrals and parish churches in order that the feet of the priest might not freeze during mass.[73]The Polar bear however first became more generally known in Western Europe by the Arctic voyages of the English and Dutch, and its price has now sunk so much that its skin, which was once considered an article of extraordinary value, is now, in adjustingaccounts between the owners of a vessel and the walrus-hunters, reckoned at from twenty-five to fifty Scandinavian crowns (say twenty-eight to fifty-six shillings).
In 1609 Stephen Bennet, during his seventh voyage to Bear Island, captured two young Polar bears, which were brought to England and kept at Paris Garden (Purchas, iii. p. 562). Now such animals are very frequently brought to Norway in order to be sent from thence to the zoological gardens of Europe, in which the Polar bear is seldom wanting. The capture is facilitated by the circumstance that the young bears seldom leave their mother when she is killed.
Along with the reindeer and the bear there are found in the regions now in question only two other land-mammalia, the mountain fox (Vulpes lagopusL.) and the lemming (Myodes obensisBrants).[74]The fox is rather common both on Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Its abode sometimes consists of a number of passages excavated in the ground and connected together, with several openings. Such a nest I saw on Wahlberg's Island in Hinloopen Strait on the summit of a fowl-fell; it was abundantly provided with a stock of half-rotten guillemots, concealed in the passages. The old foxes were not visible while we were there, but several young ones, some black, some variegated red and white, ran hither and thither from out the openings and played with supple movements in the neighbourhood of the nest. A similar nest also, with young that ran between its openings, played and hunted each other, I have seen on the north shore of Matotschkin Schar, and uninhabited fox-holes and passages at several places on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, commonly in the tops of dry sandy knolls.
The lemming is not found on Spitzbergen, but must atcertain seasons occur in incredible numbers on Novaya Zemlya. For at the commencement of summer, when the snow has recently melted away, there are to be seen, everywhere in the level fertile places in the very close grass of the meadows, footpaths about an inch and a half deep, which have been formed during winter by the trampling of these small animals, under the snow, in the bed of grass or lichens which lies immediately above the frozen ground. They have in this way united with each other the dwellings they had excavated in the ground, and constructed for themselves convenient ways, well protected against the severe cold of winter, to their fodder-places. Thousands and thousands of animals must be required in order to carry out this work even over a small area, and wonderfully keen must their sense of locality be, if, as seems probable, they can find their way with certainty in the endless labyrinth they have thus formed. During the snow-melting season these passages form channels for running off the water, small indeed, but everywhere to be met with, and contributing in a considerable degree to the drying of the ground. The ground besides is at certain places so thickly strewed with lemming dung, that it must have a considerable influence on the condition of the soil.
In the Arctic regions proper one is not tormented by the mosquito,[75]and viewed as a whole the insect fauna of the entire Polar area is exceedingly scanty, although richer than was before supposed. Arachnids, acarids, and podurids occur mostplentifully, Dr. Stuxberg having been able during the Yenisej expedition of 1875 to collect a very large number of them, which were worked out after his return—the podurids by Dr. T. TULLBERG of Upsala, the arachnids by Dr. T. KOCH of Nurnberg. These small animals are found in very numerous individual specimens, among mouldering vegetable remains, under stones and pieces of wood on the beach, creeping about on grass, straws, &c.
Of the insects proper there were brought home from Novaya Zemlya, during the same expedition, nine species of coleoptera, which were determined by Professor F. W. MÄKLIN, of Helsingfors.[76]Some few hemiptera and lepidoptera and orthoptera, and a large number of hymenoptera and diptera from the same expedition have been examined by Lector A. E. HOLMGREN of Stockholm. Dr. Stuxberg also collected a large number of land-worms, which have been described by our countryman Dr. G. EISEN, now settled in California. The occurrence of this animal group in a region where the ground at the depth of a few inches is continually frozen, appears to me exceedingly remarkable—and from a general point of view the occurrence of insects in a land which is exposed to a winter cold below the freezing-point of mercury, and where the animal cannot seek protection from it by creeping down to a stratum of earth which never freezes, presupposes that either the insect itself, its egg, larva, or pupa, may be frozen stiff without being killed. Only
WALRUSES.WALRUSES.After a drawing by G. von Yhlen (1861).
very few species of these small animals, however, appear to survive such a freezing test, and the actual land-evertebrate-fauna of the Polar countries is therefore exceedingly scanty in comparison with that of more southerly regions.
It is quite otherwise as regards the sea. Here animal life is exceedingly abundant as far as man has succeeded in making his way to the farthest north. At nearly every sweep the dredge brings up from the sea-bottom masses of decapods, crustacea, mussels, asterids, echini,[77]&c., in varying forms, and the surface of the sea on a sunny day swarms with pteropods, beroids, surface-crustacea, &c. Dr. Stuxberg will give, farther on, a sketch of this department of animal life, which in the high north is so rich in variety. In the meantime I can but refer to the large number of papers on this subject which have been issued in the publications of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Of the higher animal types a greater number within the Polar territory occur in the sea than on the land. Thus by far the greater number of the birds I have enumerated above belong to the sea, not to the land, and this is the case with nearly all the animals which for three or four hundred years back have been the objects of capture in the Arctic regions. This industry, which during the whale-fishing period yielded a return perhaps equal to that of the American oil-wells in our time, has not now in the most limited degree the importance it formerly had. For the animal whose capture yielded this rich return, the right whale (Balæna mysticetusL.), is now so extirpated in these navigable waters, that the whalers were long ago compelled to seek new fishing-places in other parts of the Polar seas. It is therefore no longer the whale, but other species of animals which attract the hunter to the coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya.
Of these animals the most important for the last fifty yearshas been the walrus, but it too is in course of being extirpated. It is now seldom found during summer on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya south of Matotschkin Schar. During our visits to that island in 1875, 1876, and 1878 we did not see one of these animals. But in the Kara Gate, on the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, and at certain places in the Kara Sea, abundant hunting is still to be had. Earlier in the year the walrus is also to be met with among the drift-ice on the west coast, and to the south, off the mouth of the Petchora, although the number of the animals that are captured by the Samoyeds at Chabarova appears to be exceedingly small. On the other hand the Dutch, in their first voyages hither, saw a considerable number of these gregarious animals. The walrus, however, did not then occur here in such abundance as they did at the same time on Spitzbergen and Bear Island, which evidently formed their principal haunts.
During Stephen Bennet's third voyage to Bear Island in 1606, 700 to 800 walruses were killed there in six hours, and in 1608 nearly 1,000 in seven hours. The carcases left lying on the beach attracted bears thither in such numbers that, for instance, in 1609 nearly fifty of them were killed by the crew of a single vessel. At one place eighteen bears were seen at once (Purchas, iii. p. 560). A Norwegian skipper was still able during a wintering in 1824-25 to kill 677 walruses. But when Tobiesen wintered there in 1865-66 he killed only a single walrus, and on the two occasions of my landing there I did not see one. Formerly the hunters almost every year, during late autumn when the drift-ice had disappeared, found "walrus on land,"i.e.herds of several hundred walruses which had crept up on some low, even, sandy beach, to pass days and weeks there in an almost motionless state. During this period of rest most of them appear to be sunk in deep sleep, yet not all, for—according to the concurrent statements of all the walrus-hunters with whom I have conversed on this subject—they keep a watch towarn their comrades when danger is near. If necessary precautions are observed,i.e.if the hunters approach the beach where the animals are assembled when the wind blows from the land, and kill with the lance those that lie nearest the water, the rest are slaughtered without difficulty, being prevented by the carcases of their dead comrades from reaching the sea. Now such an opportunity for the hunter happens exceedingly seldom; there are famous headlands on which in former times the walrus was found by hundreds, in whose neighbourhood now not a single one is to be seen.
In the sea too there are certain places which the walrus principally haunts, and which are therefore known by the hunters as walrus-banks. Such a bank is to be found in the neighbourhood of Muffin Island, situated on the north coast of Spitzbergen in 80° north latitude, and the animals that have been killed here must be reckoned by thousands. Another bank of the same kind is to be met with in 72° 15' north latitude, on the coast of Yalmal. The reason why the walruses delight to haunt these places is doubtless that they find there abundant food, which does not consist, as has often been stated, of seaweed, but of various living mussels from the bottom of the sea, principallyMya truncataandSaxicava rugosa. Their fleshy parts are freed, before they are swallowed, so remarkably well from the shells, and cleaned so thoroughly, that the contents of the stomach have the appearance of a dish of carefully-shelled oysters. In collecting its food the walrus probably uses its long tusks to dig up the mussels and worms which are deeply concealed in the clay.[78]Scoresby states that in the stomach of a walrus he found, along with small crabs, pieces of a young seal.The largest walrus tusks I have seen were two of a male walrus purchased in the summer of 1879 at St. Lawrence Island, in the north part of Behring's Sea. They measured 830 and 825 millimetres in length, their largest circumference was 227 and 230 millimetres, and they weighed together 6,680 gram. I have seen the tusks of females of nearly the same length, but they are distinguished from those of the male by being much more slender. The surface of the tusks is always full of cracks, but under it there is a layer of ivory free of cracks, which again incloses a grained kernel of bone which at some places is semi-transparent, as if drenched with oil.
When the walrus ox gets very old, he swims about by himself as a solitary individual, but otherwise animals of the same age and sex keep together in large herds. The young walrus long follows its mother, and is protected by her with evident fondness and very conspicuous maternal affection. Her first care, when she is pursued, is accordingly to save her young even at the sacrifice of her own life. A female walrus with young is nearly always lost, if they be discovered from a hunting boat. However eagerly she may try by blows and cuffs to get her young under water or lead her pursuers astray by diving with it under her forepaw, she is generally overtaken and killed. Such a hunt is truly grim, but the walrus-hunter knows no mercy in following his occupation. The walrus, especially the old solitary male, sleeps and rests during autumn, when the drift-ice has disappeared, also in the water, with his head now above the surface, now under it, and with his lungs so strongly inflated that the body is kept floating, with part of the back projecting out of the water. The latter way of sleeping is indeed possible only for so long at once as the animal can keep below, but this is said to be a very long time. If a hunting boat meets a walrus sleeping in this way it is first wakened with a loud "strike up" before it is harpooned, "in order that in its fright it may not knock a hole in the boat with its tusks."The walrus sinks and is lost, if he is killed by a shot while in the water, or if he be shot while lying on a piece of ice, but without being killed so instantaneously that he cannot cast himself into the water in his death struggles. He is killed accordingly almost exclusively with the harpoon or lance.
WALRUS TUSKS.WALRUS TUSKS.A. Tusk of male, outside. B. Tusk of male, inside C. Tusks of female.One-tenth of natural size.
The harpoon consists of a large and strong iron hook, very sharp on the outer edge, and provided with a barb. The hook is loosely fixed to the shaft, but securely fastened to the end of a slender line ten fathoms long, generally made of walrus hide. The line is fastened at its other end to the boat, in the forepart of which it lies in a carefully arranged coil. There are from fiveto ten such harpoon lines in every hunting boat. When the hunters see a herd of walrus, either on a piece of drift-ice or in the water, they endeavour silently and against the wind to approach sufficiently near to one of the animals to be able to harpoon it. If this is managed, the walrus first dives and then endeavours to swim under water all he can. But he is fixed
HUNTING IMPLEMENTS.HUNTING IMPLEMENTS.(1) Harpoon, and (2) Lance for Walrus-hunting. (3) "Skottel" for the capture of the White Whale.One-fifteenth of natural size.
with the line to the boat, and must draw it along with him. His comrades swim towards the boat, curious to ascertain the cause of the alarm. A new walrus is fixed with another harpoon, and so it goes on, one after another, until all the harpoons are in use. The boat is now drawn forward at a whizzing speed, although the rowers hold back with the oars; but there is no actual danger as long as all the animals draw in the same direction. If one of them seeks to take a different course from that of his comrades in misfortune, his line must be cut off, otherwise the boat capsizes. When the walruses get exhausted by their exertions and by loss of blood, the hunters begin to haul in the lines. One animal after the other is drawn to the stem of the boat, and there they commonly first get a blow on the head with the flat of a lance, and when they turn to guard against it, a lance is thrust into the heart. Since breechloaders have begun to be used by the walrus-hunters, they often prefer to kill the harpooned walruses with a ball instead of "lancing" them. To shoot an unharpooned walrus, on the other hand, the walrushunters formerly considered an unpardonable piece of thoughtlessness, because the animal was in this way generally wounded or killed without any advantage accruing. They therefore expressed themselves with great irritation against the tourists who sometimes came to Spitzbergen, and in this way destroyed the hunting. It cannot however be denied that they themselves in recent times have often followed the bad example, and many consider that this is one of the main reasons of the great diminution in the numbers of the walrus of late years. Should an international code be established for hunting in the Polar sea, all shooting of unharpooned walruses ought to be forbidden in the first place.
Gregariousness and curiosity appear to be the main characteristics of the walrus. These qualities of theirs I had an opportunity of observing when once, on a glorious northern summer day, I rowed forward over a mirror-bright, drift-ice-bestrewn sea right into the midst of a considerable herd of these animals. Part followed the boat long distances quite peaceably, now and then emitting a grunting sound; others swam quite close, and raised themselves high out of the water in order to take a view of the foreigners; others, again, lay so closely packed on pieces of drift-ice as to sink them down to the water's edge, while their comrades swimming about in the sea endeavoured with violence to gain a place on the already overfilled resting-places, though a number of unoccupied pieces of ice floated up and down in the neighbourhood.
When the hunters have killed a female walrus, it often happens that they take the young living. It is easily tamed, and soon regards its keeper with warm attachment. It seeks, as best it can—poorly equipped as it is for moving about on dry land—to follow the seamen on the deck, and gives itself no rest if it be left alone. Unfortunately, one does not succeed in keeping them long alive, probably because it is impossible to provide them with suitable food. There areinstances, however, of the young of the walrus being brought to Europe alive. Thus it is said (Purchas, iii., p. 560), that Master Welden and Stephen Bennet, on the 22nd/12th July, 1608, caught two young walruses alive, one a male and the other a female. The female died before they reached England, but the male lived ten weeks. He was carried to court, shown to the king and many honourable gentlemen, and excited general admiration for his extraordinary form and great docility. A young walrus that was taken to St. Petersburg in 1829-30, also died in a short time. It gave occasion to K. E. von BAER'S famous treatise: "Anatomische und zoologische Untersuchungen über das Wallross," printed inMémoires de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, ser. vi., t. iv. 2, 1838, p. 97.
The walrus is hunted for its skin, blubber, and oil. The value of a full-grown walrus was calculated at Tromsoe, in 1868, in settling accounts between the owners of hunting sloops and the hunters, at eighty Scandinavian crowns (say 4l. 10s.), but it sank in 1871 to only forty-eight crowns (say 2l. 15s.). The flesh of the walrus is coarse and train-flavoured, and is eaten by the hunters only in cases of necessity. From my own experience, however, I can certify that its comparatively small tongue is very delicious. By the Eskimo and the Chukchis the flesh of the walrus is considered a delicacy.
The walrus was doubtless hunted by the Polar tribes long before the historic period,[79]but it is mentioned for the first time in writing in the sketch of Othere's Arctic journey. The narrative shows that it was then captured on the north coast of Scandinavia. This appears the less improbable, as a walrus now and then even in our days drifts to land on the Norwegian coast, and walruses are still annually killed off Swjatoinos on the Kola peninsula,[80]The walrus is very correctly described in thewell-known Norse confession written in the end of the eleventh century, "Konungs skuggsjá" (the King's Mirror), as an animal resembling the seal,[81]except that, besides several smaller teeth, it has two large tusks which project beyond the upper jaw. This clear and unexaggerated sketch is however replaced in the later writings of the middle ages by the most extraordinary accounts of the animal's appearance and mode of capture. Thus Albertus Magnus,[82]who died in 1280, says that the walrus is taken by the
WALRUS HUNTING.WALRUS HUNTING.After Olaus Magnus (1555).
hunter, while the sleeping animal hangs by its large tusks to a cleft of the rock, cutting out a piece of its skin and fastening to it a strong rope whose other end is tied to trees, posts, or largerings fixed to rocks. The walrus is then wakened by throwing large stones at its head. In its attempts to escape it leaves its hide behind. It perishes soon after, or is thrown up half dead on the beach. He further states that walrus lines on account of their strength are suitable for lifting great weights, and that they are always on sale at Cologne. They were probably used at the
WALRUSES (female with young).WALRUSES (female with young).Old Dutch drawing.[83]
building of the Cathedral there. Similar extraordinary representations of the appearance and mode of life of the walrus are
JAPANESE DRAWING OF THE WALRUS.JAPANESE DRAWING OF THE WALRUS.[84]
repeated in a more or less altered form even by Olaus Magnus, whose representation of the walrus is shown by the accompanying woodcut.
The 11th/1st of August 1556, the year after the publication of the work of Olaus Magnus, a West European saw for the first time some actual walruses, which had been killed by Russian hunters at Vaygats Island. No description of the animal, however, is given, but from that period all the members of the English and Dutch north-east expeditions had opportunities of seeing walruses in hundreds and thousands. It was now first that man learned actually to know this remarkable animal which had been decked out in so many fables. To this period belongs the beautiful and natural delineation of the walrus which is given above.
A peculiarity of the walrus may be mentioned here. The hide, especially in old males, is often full of wounds and scratches, which appear to be caused partly by combats and scraping against sharp pieces of ice, partly by some severe disease of the skin. Mr. H. W. Elliot has remarked this of the walrus in Behring's Sea[85]. The walrus is also troubled with lice, which is not the case, so far as I know, with any kind of seal. Masses of intestinal worms are found instead in the stomach of the seal, while on the contrary none are found in that of the walrus.
With reference to the other animals that are hunted in the Polar Sea I am compelled to be very brief, as I have scarcely any observations to make regarding them which are not already sufficiently known by numerous writings.
There are three kinds of seals on Novaya Zemlya.Storsaelen, the bearded seal (Phoca barbata,Fabr.) occurs pretty generally even on the coasts of Spitzbergen, though never in large flocks. The pursuit of this animal is the most important part of the
YOUNG OF THE GREENLAND SEAL.YOUNG OF THE GREENLAND SEAL.After a drawing by A W. Quennerstedt (1864).
seal-fishing in these waters, and the bearded seal is still killed yearly by thousands. Their value is reckoned in settling accounts between owners and hunters at twenty to twenty-five Scandinavian crowns (say 22s. to 27s. 6d.).
GroenlandsorJan-Mayen-saelen, the Greenland seal (Phoca GroenlandicaMuller), which at Jan Mayen gives occasion to so profitable a fishing, also is of general occurrence among the drift-ice in the Munnan and Kara seas.
Snadden, the rough or bristled seal (Phoca hispida, Erxl.) is also common on the coast. These animals in particular are seen to lie, each at its hole, on the ice of fjords, which has not been broken up. It also many times follows with curiosity in the wake of a vessel for long distances, and can then be easily shot, because it is often so fat that, unlike the two other kinds of seals, it does not sink when it has been shot dead in the water.
Klapmytsen, the bladdernose seal, (Cystophora cristata, Erxl.) the walrus-hunters say they have never seen on Novaya Zemlya, but it is stated to occur yearly in pretty large numbers among the ice W.S.W. of South Cape on Spitzbergen. Only once during our many voyages in the Polar Sea has aKlapmytsbeen seen, viz, a young one that was killed in 1858 in the neighbourhood of Bear Island.
Of the various species of whales, the narwhal, distinguished by its long and valuable horn projecting in the longitudinal direction of the body from the upper jaw, now occurs so seldom on the coast of Novaya Zemlya that it has never been seen there by the Norwegian walrus-hunters. It is more common at Hope Island, and Witsen states (p. 903) that large herds of narwhals have been seen between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya.
The white whale or beluga, of equal size with the narwhal, on the other hand, occurs in large shoals on the coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, especially near the mouths of fresh-water streams. These animals were formerly captured, butnot with any great success, by means of a peculiar sort of harpoon, called by the hunters "skottel." Now they are caught
THE BEARDED SEAL.THE BEARDED SEAL.Swedish, Storsal (Phoca barbata, Fabr.)THE ROUGH SEAL.Swedish, Snadd. (Phoca hispida, Erxl.)
with nets of extraordinary size and strength, which are laid out from the shore at places which the white whales are wont to frequent. In this way there were taken in the year 1871, whenthe fishing appears to have been most productive, by vessels belonging to Tromsoe alone, 2,167 white whales. Their value was estimated at fifty-four Scandinavian crowns each (about 3l.). The fishing, though tempting, is yet very uncertain; it sometimes falls out extraordinarily abundant, as in the spring of 1880, when a skipper immediately on arriving at Magdalena Bay caught 300 of these animals at a cast of the net. Of the whales thus killed not only the blubber and hide are taken away, but also, when possible, the carcases, which, when cheap freight can be had, are utilised at the guano manufactories in the north of Norway. After having lain a whole year on the beach at Spitzbergen they may be taken on board a vessel without any great inconvenience, a proof that putrefaction proceeds with extreme slowness in the Polar regions.
THE WHITE WHALE.THE WHITE WHALE. (Delphinapterus leucas, Pallas)After a drawing by A.W. Quennerstedt (1804).
With its blinding milk-white hide, on which it is seldom possible to discover a spot, wrinkle, or scratch, the full-grown white whale is an animal of extraordinary beauty. The young whales are not white, but very light greyish brown. The white whale is taken in nets not only by the Norwegians at Spitzbergen, but also by the Russians and Samoyeds at Chabarova. In former times they appear to have been also caught at the mouth of the Yenisej, to judge by the large number of vertebræ that are found at the now deserted settlements there. The white whale there goes several hundred kilometres up the river. Ihave also seen large shoals of this small species of whale on the north coast of Spitzbergen and the Taimur peninsula.
Other species of the whale occur seldom on Novaya Zemlya. Thus on this occasion only two small whales were seen during our passage from Tromsoe, and I do not remember having seen more than one in the sea round Novaya Zemlya in the course of my two previous voyages to the Yenisej. At the north part of the island, too, these animals occur so seldom, that a hunter told me, as something remarkable, that towards the end of July, 1873, W.N.W. of the western entrance to Matotschkin Schar 20' to 30' from land, he had seen a large number of whales, belonging to two species, of which one was aslaethval, and the other had as it were a top, instead of a fin, on the back.
It is very remarkable that whales still occur in great abundance on the Norwegian coast, though they have been hunted there for a thousand years back, but, on the other hand, if we except the little white whale, only occasionally east of the White Sea. The whale fishing which was carried on on so grand a scale on the west coast of Spitzbergen, has therefore never been prosecuted to any great extent on Novaya Zemlya; and fragments of skeletons of the whale which are found thrown up in such quantities on the shores of Spitzbergen, are not to be found, so far as my experience reaches, either on the shores of Novaya Zemlya, on the coast of the Kara Sea, or at the places on the north coast of Siberia between the Yenisej and the Lena, at which we landed. The sacrifices which were so long made in vain in the endeavour to find a passage to China in this direction accordingly were not compensated, as on Spitzbergen, by the rise of a profitable whale fishery. Meeting with a whale is spoken of by the first seafarers in these regions as something very remarkable and dangerous; for instance, in the account of Stephen Burrough's voyage in 1556:—"On St. James his day, there was a monstrous whale aboord of us, so neere to our side that we might have thrust a sworde or any other weapon inhim, which we durst not doe for feare lie should have over-throwen our shippe; and then I called my company together, and all of us shouted, and with the crie that we made he departed from us; there was as much above water of his back as the bredth of our pinnesse, and at his falling down he made such a terrible noise in the water, that a man would greatly have marvelled, except he had known the cause of it; but, God be thanked, we were quietly delivered of him."[86]When Nearchus sailed with the fleet of Alexander the Great from the Indus to the Red Sea, a whale also caused so great a panic that it was only with difficulty that the commander could restore order among the frightened seamen, and get the rowers to row to the place where the whale spouted water and caused a commotion in the sea like that of a whirlwind. All the men now shouted, struck the water with their oars, and sounded their trumpets, so that the large, and, in the judgment of the Macedonian heroes, terrible animal, was frightened. It seems to me that from these incidents we may draw the conclusion that great whales in Alexander's time were exceedingly rare in the sea which surrounds Greece, and in Burrough's time in that which washes the shores of England. Quite otherwise was the whale regarded on Spitzbergen some few years after Burrough's voyage by the Dutch and English whalers. At the sight of a whale all men were out of themselves with joy, and rushed down into the boats in order from them to attack and kill the valuable animal. The fishery was carried on with such success, that, as has already been stated, the right whale (Balæna mysticetusL.), whose pursuit then gave full employment to ships by hundreds, and to men by tens of thousands, is now practically extirpated. Thus during our many voyages in these waters we have only seen one such whale, which happened on the 23rd June, 1864, among the drift-ice off the west coast of Spitzbergen in 78° N.L. As the right whale still occurs in no limited numbers in other parts ofthe Polar Sea, and as there has been no whale fishing on the coast of Spitzbergen for the last forty or fifty years, this state of things shows how difficult it is to get an animal type to return to a region where it has once been extirpated, or from which it has been driven away.
The whale which Captain Svend Foeyn has almost exclusively hunted on the coast of Finmark since 1864 belongs to quite another species,blaohvalen (Balænoptera SibbaldiiGray); and there are likewise other species of the whale which still in pretty large numbers follow shoals of fish to the Norwegian coast, where they sometimes strand and are killed in considerable numbers. Atandhval, killer or sword-fish (Orca gladiatorDesm.) was even captured some years ago in the harbour of Tromsoe. This whale was already dying of suffocation, caused by an attempt to swallow an eider which entered the gullet, not, as the proper way is, with the head, but with the tail foremost. When the mouthful should have slidden down, it was prevented by the stiff feathers sticking out, and the bird stuck in the whale's throat, which, to judge by the extraordinary struggles it immediately began to make, must have caused it great inconvenience, which was increased still more when the inhabitants did not neglect to take advantage of its helpless condition to harpoon it.
FOOTNOTES:
[60]The namestormfogelis also used for the Stormy Petrel (Thalassidroma pelagica, Vig.). This bird does not occur in the portions of the Polar Sea with which we are now concerned.
[61]At Bear Island, Tobiesen, on the 28th May, 1866, saw fulmars' eggs laid immediately on the ice which still covered the rock. At one place a bird sitting on its eggs was even frozen fast by one leg to the ice on the 31/21 August, 1596. Barents found on the north part of Novaya Zemlya that some fulmars had chosen as a hatching-place a piece of ice covered with a little earth. In both these cases the under part of the egg during hatching could never be warmed above the freezing-point.
[62]It deserves to be investigated whether some little auks do not, like the Spitzbergen ptarmigan, pass the winter in their stone mounds, flying out to sea only at pretty long intervals in order to collect their food.
[63]The quantity of eider-down which was brought from the Polar lands to Tromsoe amounted in 1868 to 540, in 1869 to 963, in 1870 to 882, in 1871 to 630, and in 1872 to 306 kilograms. The total annual yield may be estimated at probably three times as much.
[64]There are, however, various other song-birds found already on south Novaya Zemlya, for instance,lappsparfven, the Lapland bunting (Emberiza lapponica, L.), andberglaerkan, the shore-lark (Alauda alpestris, L.). They hatch on the ground under bushes, tufts of grass, or stones, in very carefully constructed nests lined with cotton-grass and feathers, and are not uncommon.
[65]Hedenström also states (Otrywki o Sibiri, St. Petersburg, 1830, p. 130,) that the ptarmigan winters on the New Siberian Islands, and that there it is fatter and more savoury than on the mainland.
[66]The hunters from Tromsoe brought home, in 1868, 996; in 1869, 975; and in 1870, 837 reindeer. When to this we add the great number of reindeer which are shot in spring and are not included in these calculations, and when we consider that the number of walrus-hunting vessels which are fitted out from Tromsoe is less than that of those which go out from Hammerfest, and that the shooting of reindeer on Spitzbergen is also carried on by hunters from other towns, and by tourists, we must suppose that at least 3,000 reindeer have been killed during each of those years. Formerly reindeer stalking was yet more productive, but since 1870 the number killed has considerably diminished.
[67]When Spitzbergen was first mapped, a great number of places were named after reindeer, which shows that the reindeer was found there in large numbers, and now just at these places it is completely absent. On the other hand, the Dutch and English explorers during the sixteenth century saw no reindeer on Novaya Zemlya. During the Swedish expedition of 1875 no reindeer were seen on the west coast of this island south of Karmakul Bay, while a number were shot at Besimannaja Bay and Matotschkin Schar. When some of the companions of the well-known walrus-hunting captain, Sievert Tobiesen, were compelled in 1872-73 to winter at North Goose Cape, they shot during winter and spring only eleven reindeer. Some Russians, who by an accident were obliged to pass six years in succession somewhere on the coast of Stans Foreland (Maloy Broun), and who, during this long time, were dependent for their food on what they could procure by hunting without the use of fire-arms (they had when they landed powder and ball for only twelve shots), when the three survivors were found and taken home in 1749, had killed two hundred and fifty reindeer (P.L. le Roy,Relation des Aventures arrivées à quatre matelots Russes jettés par une tempête près de l'Isle deserte d'Ost-Spitzbergen, sur laquelle ils ont passé six ans et trois mois, 1766).
[68]During the wintering of 1869-70 on East Greenland, Dr. Punsch once saw a female bear with quite small young (Die zweite deutsche Nordpolarfahrt, Leipzig, 1873-74. Vol. II p. 157).
[69]W. Scoresby's des Jüngern,Tagebuch einer Reise auf dem Wallfischfang. Aus dem engl. üebers. Hamburg, 1825, p. 127.
[70]Die zweite deutsche Nordpolarfahrt, Vol. I. p. 465.
[71]Grönlands historiske Mindesmärker. Kjöbenhavn, 1838, III. p. 384.
[72]Ramusio, Part II., Venice, 1583, p. 60.
[73]Ol. Magnus. Rome edition, 1555, p. 621.
[74]It is stated that wolves also occur on Novaya Zemlya as far up as to Matotschkin Sound. They are exceedingly common on the north coasts of Asia and Eastern Europe.
[75]That is to say, not on Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, for it is otherwise on the coast of the mainland. In West Greenland the mosquito as far north as the southern part of Disco Island is still so terrible, especially to the new comer during the first days, that the face of any one who without a veil ventures into marshy ground overgrown with bushes, becomes in a few hours unrecognisable. The eyelids are closed with swelling and changed into water-filled bladders, suppurating tumours are formed in the head under the hair, &c. But when a man has once undergone this unpleasant and painful inoculation, the body appears, at least for one summer, to be less susceptible to the mosquito-poison.
[76]As theonlyChrysomela, which von Baer found at Matotschkin Schar, played so great arôlein Arctic-zoological literature, I shall here enumerate the species of coleoptera, now known—after Professor Mäklim's determination of the collections which we brought home with us—to exist on Novaya Zemlya. These are:—Feronia borealisMénétr.,F. gelidaMäkl.,Amara alpinaFabr.,Agabus subquadratusMotsch.,Homalota sibiricaMäkl.,Homalium angustatumMäkl.,Cylletron (?) hyperboreumMäkl.,Chrysomela septentrionalis(?) Ménétr.,Prasocuris hannoveranaFabr., v.degenerata. From Vaygats Island we brought home seven species more, which were not found on Novaya Zemlya. The insects occur partly under stones, especially at places where lemming dung is abundant, or in tracts where birds'-nests are numerous, partly in warm days on willow-bushes.
[77]Echini occur only very sparingly in the Kara Sea and the Siberian Polar Sea, but west of Novaya Zemlya at certain places in such numbers that they almost appear to cover the sea-bottom.
[78]Compare Malmgren's instructive papers in the publications of the Royal (Swedish) Academy of Sciences and Scoresby'sArctic Regions, Edinburgh, 1820, i., p. 502. That the walrus eats mussels is already indicated in the Dutch drawing from the beginning of the seventeenth century reproduced below,page 160.
[79]Implements of walrus-bone occur among the Northern gravefinds.
[80]Compare note at page 48 above.
[81]I saw in 1858 aPhoca barbatawith tusks worn away by age, which in its reddish-brown colour very much resembled a walrus, and was little inferior to it in size.
[82]Albertus Magnus,De animalibus, Mantua, 1479, Lib. xxiv. At the same place however is given a description of the whale-fishery grounded on actual experience, but with the shrewd addition that what the old authors had written on the subject did not correspond with experience.
[83]This drawing is made after a facsimile by Frederick Müller from Hessel Gerritz,Descriptio et delineatio geographica detectionis freti, &c.Amsterodami, 1613. The same drawing is reproduced coloured in BlaviiAtlas major, Part I, 1665, p. 25, with the inscription: "Ad vivum delineatum ab Hesselo G.A."
[84]The drawing is taken from a Japanese manuscript book of travels—No. 360 of the Japanese library which I brought home. According to a communication by an attaché of the Japanese embassy which visited Stockholm in the autumn of 1880, the book is entitledKau-kai-i-fun, "Narrative of a remarkable voyage on distant seas." The manuscript, in four volumes, was written in 1830. In the introduction it is stated that when some Japanese, on the 21st November, 1793 (?), were proceeding with a cargo of rice to Yesso, they were thrown out of their course by a storm, and were driven far away on the sea, till in the beginning of the following June they came to some of the Aleutian islands, which had recently been taken by the Russians. They remained there ten months, and next year in the end of June they came to Ochotsk. The following year in autumn they were carried to Irkutsk, where they remained eight years, well treated by the Russians. They were then taken to St. Petersburg, where they had an audience of the Czar, and got furs and splendid food. Finally they were sent back by sea round Cape Horn to Japan in one of Captain von Krusenstern's vessels. They were handed over to the Japanese authorities in the spring of 1805, after having been absent from their native country about thirteen years. From Nagasaki they were carried to Yeddo, where they were subjected to an examination. One person put questions, another wrote the answers, and a third showed by drawings all the remarkable events they had survived. They were then sent to their native place. In the introduction it is further said that the shipwrecked were unskilful seamen, by whom little attention was often given to the most important matters. A warning accordingly is given against full reliance on their accounts and the drawings in the book. The latter occupy the fourth part of the work, consisting of more than 100 quarto pages. It is remarkable that the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe, and the first journey of the Japanese round the world, happened at the same time.
[85]A Report upon the Condition of Affairs in the Territory of Alaska. Washington, 1875, p. 160.
[86]Hakluyt, first edition, p. 317.