The Walrus Hunters

The Walrus Hunters, by R.M.
Ballantyne

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Walrus Hunters, by R.M.
Ballantyne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Walrus Hunters A Romance of the Realms of Ice
Author: R.M. Ballantyne
Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21709]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
WALRUS HUNTERS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

"The Walrus Hunters", by R.M. Ballantyne (1825-1894), 1893.
_________________________________________________________
______________

This book is full of action. It deals with both a tribe of Red Indians, of
the Dogrib nation, and a tribe of Eskimos. Normally a certain
animosity existed between these two, but this tale relates how under
certain circumstances, members of these tribes could not only become
close friends, and work together towards a common goal, but also
intermarry.
There is no doubt but that the reader will have a greater knowledge of
the ways and thoughts of the Indian and the Eskimo, and kindly feelings
towards both, after reading this book--an easy task, for it is a good and
absorbing read.
In this little preface we have deliberately used the old-fashioned terms
for the two races, fully aware that they are both inexact, and that today
we would, for instance, use the term Inuit instead of Eskimo. However,
this book was written in 1893, and things were different then.
It has been written of Ballantyne that, in the last years before his death
in 1894, the quality of his work was failing and indeed repetitive.
Anyone reading this book can see that this is untrue, for it is one of his
very best. Indeed it is a strange thing that his earlier books, which were
well-promoted upon their publication, should still be so much more
read than his later ones. While working upon this edition of "The
Walrus Hunters" we found ourselves several times reflecting upon this
strange state of affairs.
Robert Michael Ballantyne was born in 1825 and died in 1894. He was
educated at the Edinburgh Academy, and in 1841 he became a clerk
with the Hudson Bay Company, working at the Red River Settlement in
Northern Canada until 1847, arriving back in Edinburgh in 1848. The
letters he had written home were very amusing in their description of
backwoods life, and his family publishing connections suggested that
he should construct a book based on these letters. Three of his most
enduring books were written over the next decade, "The Young Fur
Traders", "Ungava", "The Hudson Bay Company", and were based on
his experiences with the H.B.C. In this period he also wrote "The Coral
island" and "Martin Rattler", both of these taking place in places never
visited by Ballantyne. Having been chided for small mistakes he made

in these books, he resolved always to visit the places he wrote about.
With these books he became known as a great master of literature
intended for teenagers. He researched the Cornish Mines, the London
Fire Brigade, the Postal Service, the Railways, the laying down of
submarine telegraph cables, the construction of light-houses, the
light-ship service, the life-boat service, South Africa, Norway, the
North Sea fishing fleet, ballooning, deep-sea diving, Algiers, and many
more, experiencing the lives of the men and women in these settings by
living with them for weeks and months at a time, and he lived as they
lived.
He was a very true-to-life author, depicting the often squalid scenes he
encountered with great care and attention to detail. His young readers
looked forward eagerly to his next books, and through the 1860s and
1870s there was a flow of books from his pen, sometimes four in a year,
all very good reading. The rate of production diminished in the last ten
or fifteen years of his life, but the quality never failed.
He published over ninety books under his own name, and a few books
for very young children under the pseudonym "Comus".
For today's taste his books are perhaps a little too religious, and what
we would nowadays call "pi". In part that was the way people wrote in
those days, but more important was the fact that in his days at the Red
River Settlement, in the wilds of Canada, he had been a little dissolute,
and he did not want his young readers to be unmindful of how they
ought to behave, as he felt he had been.
Some of his books were quite short, little over 100 pages. These books
formed a series intended for the children of poorer parents, having less
pocket-money. These