Note 164 — Chapter XIV · MORSE AND MAHLEMOÖT.

These favored basaltic tables are also commented upon in similar connection by an old writer in 1775, Shuldham, who calls them “echouries;” he is describing the Atlantic walrus as it appears at the Magdalen Islands: “The echouries are formed principally by nature, being a gradual slope of soft rock, with which the Magdalen Islands abound, about eighty to one hundred yards wide at the water-side, and spreading so as to contain, near the summit, a very considerable number.” The tables at Walrus Island and those at Southwest Point are very much less in area than those described by Shuldham, and are a small series of low, saw-tooth jetties of the harder basalt, washed in relief, from a tufa matrix; there is no room to the landward of them for many walruses to lie upon. The Odobœnus does not like to haul up on loose or shingly shores, because it has the greatest difficulty in getting a solid hold for its fore flippers with which to pry up and move ahead its huge, clumsy body. When it hauls on a sand-beach, it never attempts to crawl out to the dry region back of the surf, but lies just awash, at high water. In this fashion they used to rest all along the sand-reaches of St. Paul prior to the Russian advent in 1786-87; and when Shuldham was inditing his letters on the habits of Rosmarus, Odobœnus was then lying out in full force and great physical peace on the Pribylov Islands.