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Show 434 MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. [June 25, Economic value and hunting.-The ivory tusks of the Walrus always command a good price in the market; and the hides are held in high value as an article of commerce; they are used as material for defending the yards and rigging of ships from chafing. It is also occasionally used for strong bands in various machinery, carriage-making, &c. The flesh tastes something like coarse beef. The whalers rarely or ever use it, having a strong prejudice against it in common with that of Seals and Whales. The Walrus-hunters in Spitzbergen almost exist upon it; and the Eskimo high up in Smith's Sound look upon it as their staple article of food. The American explorers who wintered there soon acquired a liking for it. Accordingly the " Morsk " has been hunted in northern regions from a very early period. The Icelandic Sagas (such as the Speculum regale &c.) speak of it as Rostungur; and there is said to be a letter in the library of the Vatican proving that the old Norse and Icelandic colonists in Greenland paid their " Peter's Pence" in the shape of Walrus-tusks and hides. However, in 890, as far back as the days of King Alfred of England, ffithere, "the old sea-captain who dwelt in Helgoland," gave a most circumstantial account to that monarch (who wrote it down in his Orosius) of slaying, he and his six companions, no less than "three score Horse-whales" in one day. At the present period it is principally captured in Spitzbergen by Russian and Norwegian hunters, who visit that island for the purpose. In Danish Greenland, though it was once so abundant that the principle article of trade with Europe, in the days of Erik Raude's colonists, was the tusks of this animal, it may be said now-a-days, so far as its hunting or commercial value is concerned, to be extinct. There are never more than a few killed yearly, and it frequently happens that a year passes without any at all being killed within the limits of the Danish trading-posts. It is more than probable that they never were abundant in South Greenland, but that the old colonists went north in pursuit of them. From the Runic column found on the island of Kingatarsoak in 73° N. lat., we know that these enterprising rovers did sail far north; and it is more than reasonable to suppose that it was on one of these Walrus-hunting expeditions that this monument was erected. Indeed so few are now killed in Danish Greenland (whether through degeneracy of the hunters or scarcity of the Walrus it is scarcely worth inquiring too closely) that as, notwithstanding all the appliances of European civilization now accessible to the natives, ivory cannot be dispensed with in the manufacture of Eskimo implements of the chase, its tusks have sometimes to be reimported from Europe into Greenland. North of the glaciers of Melville Bay, the hardy Arctic highlanders, aided by no kayak or rifle, but with a manly self-reliance, enfeebled by no bastard civilization engrafted upon their pristine savagedom, with their harpoon and allunaks still boldly attack the Walrus as he lies huddled upon the ice foot; and thereby the native supplies to his family the food and light which make tolerable the darkness of the long Arctic night of Smith's Sound. The whalers kill a few annually, striking them, as they do the Whale, with the gun-harpoon, and killing them with |