Our Arctic province

I know that it is said by Parry, by Hall, and lately by others, that the flesh of the Atlantic walrus is palatable; perhaps the nature of its food-supply is the cause. We all recognize a wide difference in pork from hogs fed on corn and those fed on beech-mast and oak-acorns, and those which have lived upon the offal of the slaughtering houses, or have gathered the decayed castings of the sea-shore; the sea-horse of Bering Sea lives upon that which does not give a pleasant flavor to its flesh.

The range of our Alaskan walrus now appears to be restricted in the Arctic Ocean to an extreme westward at Cape Chelagskoi, on the Siberian coast, and an extreme eastward between Point Barrow and the region of Point Beechey, on the Alaskan shore. It is, however, substantially confined between Koliutchin Bay, Siberia, and Point Barrow, Alaska. As far as its distribution in polar waters is concerned, and how far to the north it travels from these coasts of two continents, I am unable to present any well-authenticated data illustrative of the subject; the shores of Wrangel Island were found in possession of walrus-herds during the season of 1881.

This walrus has, however, a very wide range of distribution in Alaska, though not near so great as in prehistoric times. They abound to the eastward and southeastward of St. Paul, over in Bristol Bay, where great numbers congregate on the sand-bars and flats, now flooded, now bared by the rising and ebbing of the tide; they are hunted here to a considerable extent for their ivory. No morse are found south of the Aleutian Islands; still, not more than forty-five or fifty years ago, small gatherings of these animals were killed here and there on some islands between Kadiak and Oonimak Pass; the greatest aggregate of them, south of Bering Straits, will always be found in the estuaries of Bristol Bay and on the north side of the peninsula of Alaska.

I have been frequently questioned whether, in my opinion, more than a short space of time would elapse ere the walrus was exterminated, or not, since our whalers had begun to hunt them in Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. To this I frankly make answer that I do not know enough of the subject to give a correct judgment. The walrus spend most of their time in waters that are within reach of these skilful and hardy navigators; and if they (the walrus) are of sufficient value to a whaler, he can and undoubtedly will make a business of killing them, and work the same sad result that he has brought about with the mighty schools of cetacea which once whistled and bared their backs, throughout the now deserted waters of Bering Sea, in perfect peace and seclusion prior to 1842. The returns of the old Russian America Company show that an annual average of ten thousand walrus have been slain by the Eskimo since 1799 to 1867. There are a great many left yet; but, unless the oil of Rosmarus becomes very precious commercially, I think the shoal waters of Bristol Bay and Kuskokvim mouth, together with the eccentric tides thereof, will preserve the species indefinitely. Forty years ago, when the North Pacific was a rendezvous of the greatest whaling-fleet that ever floated, those vessels could not, nor can they now, approach nearer than sixty or even eighty miles of many muddy shoals, sands, and bars upon which the walrus rest in Bristol Bay, scattered in herds of a dozen or so to bodies of thousands, living in lethargic peace and almost unmolested, except in several small districts which are carefully hunted over by the natives of Oogashik for oil and ivory. I have been credibly informed that they also breed in Bristol Bay, and along its coast as far north as Cape Avinova, during seasons of exceptional rigor in the Arctic.

The Innuits of St. Lawrence, and all of their race living above them, hunt the walrus without any excitement other than that of securing such quarry. They never speak of real danger. When they do not shoot them as these beasts drift in sleepy herds on ice-floes, then they surprise them on the beaches or reefs and destroy a herd by spearing and lancing. When harpooned or speared, a head of the weapon is so made as to detach itself from its shank, and by thus sticking in the carcass a line of walrus-hide is made fast to the plethoric body of Rosmarus. When this brute has expended its surplus vitality by towing the natives a few miles in a mad, frenzied burst of swimming, their bidarrah is quietly drawn up to its puffing form close enough to permit of a coup by an ivory-headed lance; it is then towed to a beach at high water. When the ebb is well out, the huge carcass is skinned by its dusky butchers, who out it up into large square chunks of flesh and blubber, which are deposited in queer little “Dutch-oven” caches of each family that are made especially for its reception.

Dressing walrus-hides is the only serious hard labor which the Alaskan Innuit subjects himself to. He cannot lay it entirely upon the women, as the Sioux do when they spread buffalo bodies all over the plains. It is too much for female strength alone, and so the men bear a hand right lustily in this business. It takes from four to six stout natives, when a green walrus-hide is removed, to carry it to a sweating-hole, where it is speedily unhaired. Then, stretched alternately upon air-frames and pinned over the earth, it is gradually scraped down to a requisite thinness for use in covering the bidarrah skeletons, etc.

There are probably six or seven thousand human beings in Alaska who live largely by virtue of the existence of Rosmarus, and every year, when the season opens, they gather together by settlements, as they are contiguous, and discuss the walrus chances for a coming year as earnestly and as wisely as our farmers who confer over their prospects for corn and potatoes. But an Eskimo hunter is a sadly improvident mortal, though he is not wasteful of morse life, while we are provident, and yet wasteful of our resources.

If the North Pole is ever reached by our people, they will do so only when they can eat walrus-meat and get plenty of it—at least that is my belief—and, knowing now what the diet is, I think the journey to that hyperborean ultima is a long one, though there is plenty of meat and many men who want to try it.

Unless we spend a winter in the Arctic Ocean above Bering Straits we will not be able to see a polar bear; but there is one place, and one place only, in Alaska where in midsummer we can land, and there behold on its swelling, green, and flowery uplands hundreds of these huge ursine brutes. That place is the island of St. Matthew, and it is right in our path as we leave St. Lawrence and head for Oonimak Pass and home.

St. Matthew Island is an odd, jagged, straggling reach of bluffs and headlands, connected by bars and lowland spits. The former, seen at a little distance out at sea, resemble half a dozen distinct islands. The extreme length is twenty-two miles, and it is exceedingly narrow in proportion. Hall Island is a small one that lies west from it, separated from it by a strait (Sarichev) less than three miles in width, while the only other outlying land is a sharp, jagged pinnacle-rock, rearing itself over a thousand feet abruptly from the sea, standing five miles south of Sugar-loaf Cone on the main island. From a cleft and blackened fissure, near the summit of this serrated pinnacle-rock, volcanic fire and puffs of black smoke have been recorded as issuing when first discovered, and they have issued ever since.

Our first landing, early in the morning of August 5th, was at the spot under Cub Hill, near Cape Upright, the easternmost point of the island. The air came out from the northwest cold and chilly, and snow and ice were on the hill-sides and in the gullies. The sloping sides and summits of these hills were of a grayish, russet tinge, with deep-green swale flats running down into the lowlands, which are there more intensely green and warmer in tone. A pebble-bar formed by the sea between Cape Upright and Waterfall Head is covered with a deep stratum of glacial drift, carried down from the flanks of Polar and Cub Hills, and extending over two miles of this water-front to the westward, where it is met by a similar washing from that quarter. Back, and in the centre of this neck, are several small lakes and lagoons without fish; but emptying into them are a number of clear, lively brooks, in which were salmon-parr of fine quality. The little lakes undoubtedly receive them; hence they were land-locked salmon. A luxuriant growth of thick moss and grass, interspersed, existed almost everywhere on the lowest ground; and occasionally strange dome-like piles of peat were lifted four or five feet above marshy swales, and appeared so remarkably like abandoned barraboras that we repeatedly turned from our course to satisfy ourselves personally to the contrary.

As these lowlands ascend to the tops of higher hills, all vegetation changes rapidly to a simple coat of cryptogamic gray and light russet, with a slippery slide for the foot wherever a steep flight or climbing was made. Water oozes and trickles everywhere under foot, since an exhalation of frost is in progress all the time. Sometimes these swales rise and cross hill-summits to the valleys again without any interruption in their wet, swampy character. The action of ice in rounding down and grinding hills, chipping bluffs, and chiselling everywhere, carrying the soil and débris into depressions and valleys, is most beautifully exhibited on St. Matthew. The hills at the foot of Sugar-loaf Cone are bare and literally polished by ice-sheets and slides of melting snow. Rocks and soil from these summits and slopes are carried down and “dumped,” as it were, in numberless little heaps beneath, so that the foot of every hill and out on the plain around strongly put us in mind of those refuse-piles which are dropped over the commons or dumping-grounds of a city. Nowhere can the work of ice be seen to finer advantage than here, aided and abetted, as it undoubtedly is, by the power of wind, especially with regard to that chiselling action of frost on the faces of ringing metallic porphyry cliffs.

The flora here is as extensive as on the Seal Islands, two hundred miles to the southward; but the species of gramma are not near so varied. Indeed, there is very little grass around about. Wherever there is soil it seems to be converted by the abundant moisture into a swale or swamp, over which we travelled as on a quaking water-bed; but on the rounded hilltops and ridge-summits wind-driven and frost-splintered shingle makes good walking. Both of these climatic agencies evidently have a permanent iron grip on this island.

The west end of St. Matthew differs materially from the east. A fantastic weathering of the rocks at Cathedral Point, Hall Island, will strike the eye of a most casual observer as his ship enters the straits going south. This eastern wall of that point looms up from the water like a row of immense cedar-tree trunks. The scaling off of basaltic porphyry and a growth of yellowish-green and red mossy lichens made the effect most real, while a vast bank of fog lying just overhead seemed to shut out from our vision the foliage and branches that should be above. This north cape of Hall Island changes when approached, with every mile’s distance, to a new and altogether different profile.

Our visit at the west end of the island of St. Matthew was, geologically speaking, the most interesting experience I have ever had in Alaska. A geologist who may desire to study the greatest variety of igneous forms in situ, within a short and easy radius, can do no better than make his survey here. These rocks are not only varied by mineral colors, together with a fantastic arrangement of basalt and porphyry, but are rich and elegant in their tinting by the profuse growth of lichens—brown, yellow, green, and bronze.

An old Russian record prepared us, in landing, to find bears here, but it did not cause us to be equal to the sight we saw, for we met bears—yea, hundreds of them. I was going to say that I saw bears here as I had seen seals to the south, but that, of course, will not do, unless as a mere figure of speech. During the nine days that we were busy in surveying this island, we never were one moment, while on land, out of sight of a bear or bears; their white forms in the distance always answered to our search, though they ran from our immediate presence with a wild celerity, travelling in a swift, shambling gallop, or trotting off like elephants. Whether due to the fact that they were gorged with food, or that the warmer weather of summer subdued their temper, we never could coax one of these animals to show fight. Its first impulse and its last one, while within our influence, was flight—males, females, and cubs—all, when surprised by us, rushing with one accord right, left, and in every direction, over the hills and far away.

After shooting half a dozen, we destroyed no more, for we speedily found that we had made their acquaintance at the height of their shedding-season, and their snowy and highly prized winter-dress was a very different article from the dingy, saffron-colored, grayish fur that was flying like downy feathers in the wind, when ever rubbed or pulled by our hands. They never growled, or uttered any sound whatever, even when shot or wounded.

Here, on the highest points, where no moss ever grows, and nothing but a fine porphyritic shingle slides and rattles beneath our tread, are bear-roads leading from nest to nest, or stony lairs, which they have scooped out of frost-splintered débris on the hill-sides, and where old she-bears undoubtedly bring forth their young: but it was not plain, because we saw them only sleeping, at this season of the year, on the lower ground; they seemed to delight in stretching themselves upon, and rolling over, the rankest vegetation.

They sleep soundly, but fitfully, rolling their heavy arms and legs about as they doze. For naps they seem to prefer little grassy depressions on the sunny hill-sides and along the numerous water-courses, and their paths were broad and well beaten all over the island. We could not have observed less than two hundred and fifty or three hundred of these animals while we were there; at one landing on Hall Island there were sixteen in full sight at one sweep of our eyes, scampering up and off from the approach of the ship’s boat.

Provided with more walrus-meat than he knows what to do with, the polar bear, in my opinion, has never cared much for the Seal Islands; the natives have seen them, however, on St. Paul, and its old men have their bear stories, which they tell to a rising generation. The last “medvait” killed on St. Paul Island was shot at Bogaslov in 1848; none have ever come down since, and very few were there before, but those few evidently originated at and made St. Matthew Island their point of departure. Hence I desire to notice this hitherto unexplored spot, standing, as it does, two hundred miles to the northward of St. Paul, and which, until Lieutenant Maynard and myself, in 1874, surveyed and walked over its entire coast-line, had not been trodden by white men, or by natives, since that dismal record made by a party of five Russians and seven Aleutes who passed the winter of 1810-11 on it, and who were so stricken down with scurvy as to cause the death of all the Russians save one, while the rest barely recovered and left early the following year. We found the ruins of those huts which had been occupied by this unfortunate and discomfited party of fur-hunters; they were landed there to secure polar bears in the depth of winter, when such shaggy coats should be the finest.

As we complete our review of St. Matthew and its ursine occupation, the circuit of Alaska has been made—its impression we have recorded, and the path from here home again is a bee-line to the Golden Gate over