after one or two discharges did not seem to be greatly disturbed, but allowed the people to land on the ice near them, and, when approached, showed an evident disposition to give battle.  After they had got into the water, three were struck with harpoons and killed from the boats.  When first wounded they became quite furious, and one, which had been struck from Captain Lyon’s boat, made a resolute attack upon her and injured several of the planks with its enormous tusks.  A number of the others came round them, also repeatedly striking the wounded animals with their tusks, with the intention either of getting them away, or else of joining in the attack upon them.  Many of these animals had young ones, which, when assaulted, they either took between their fore-flippers to carry off, or bore away on their backs.  Both of those killed by the Fury’s boats were females, and the weight of the largest was fifteen hundred and two quarters nearly; but it was by no means remarkable for the largeness of its dimensions.  The peculiar barking noise made by the walrus when irritated, may be heard, on a calm day, with great distinctness at the distance of two miles at least.  We found musket-balls the most certain and expeditious way of despatching them after they had been once struck with the harpoon, the thickness of their skin being such that whale-lances generally bend without penetrating it.  One of these creatures being accidentally touched by one of the oars in Lieutenant Nias’s boat, took hold of it between its flippers, and, forcibly twisting it out of the man’s hand, snapped it in two.  They produced us very little oil, the blubber being thin and poor at this season, but were welcomed in a way that had not been anticipated; for some quarters of this “marine beef,” as Captain Cook has called it, being hung up for steaks, the meat was not only eaten, but eagerly sought after on this and every other occasion throughout the voyage, by all those among us who could overcome the prejudice arising chiefly from the dark colour of the flesh.  In no other respect that I could ever discover, is the meat of the walrus, when fresh-killed, in the slightest degree unpalatable.  The heart and liver are indeed excellent.

After an unobstructed night’s run, during which we met with no ice except in some loose “streams,” the water became so much shoaler as to make it necessary to proceed with greater caution.  About this time, also, a great deal of high land came in sight to the northward and eastward, which, on the first inspection of the Esquimaux charts, we took to be the large portion of land called Ke=iyuk-tar-ruoke,[001] between which and the continent the promised strait lay that was to lead us to the westward.  So far all was satisfactory; but, after sailing a few miles farther, it is impossible to describe our disappointment and mortification in perceiving an unbroken sheet of ice extending completely across the supposed passage from one land to the other.  This consisted of a floe