[Illustration: The Ice Islands.]
From the Chukchee villages of Asia, Cook sailed back to the American
coast, passing north of Bering Straits directly in mid-channel. It is
an odd thing, while very little ice-drift is met in Bering Sea, you
have no sooner passed north of the straits than a white world surrounds
you. Fog, ice, ice, fog--endlessly, with palisades of ice twelve feet
high, east and west, far as the eye can see! The crew amuse themselves
alternately gathering driftwood for fuel, and hunting {195} walrus over
the ice. It is in the North Pacific that the walrus attains its great
size--nine feet in length, broader across its back than any animal
known to the civilized world. These piebald yellow monsters lay
wallowing in herds of hundreds on the ice-fields. At the edge lay
always one on the watch; and no matter how dense the fog, these walrus
herds on the ice, braying and roaring till the surf shook, acted as a
fog-horn to Cook's ships, and kept them from being jammed in the
ice-drift. Soon two-thirds of the furs got at Nootka had spoiled of
rain-rot.
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