stefansson-wrangel-09-11-003-001

Stefansson Arctic Ex.

Knight

January 8, 1923.

Dear Mr. Knight:

I have been traveling around a little lecturing and
am starting on a long tour to-day. Those travels and other work have
delayed my replying to your letter of December 20th.

My feeling about the men on Wrangel Island is that they
are in no more danger than they would be in an equally isolated tropi-
cal island. Illness is, of course, possible but the danger of that is
no greater than it always has been on our expeditions. We never have
carried a doctor, and if there had been one he would have been at the
ship with us operating sometimes five hundred or a thousand miles away.
It is a very healthful climate, the danger of illness is less than it
would be in a city, and about the only drawback on Wrangel Island from
that point of view is the absence of surgical care. Diseases do not
seem to be controllable by drugs to any great extent, but such things
as appendicitis can be dealt with easily by the knife.

I do not think there is any danger of shortage of
ammunition. They took with them to Wrangel Island a far larger supply
than we would ordinarily use in the same amount of time. I think Lorne
and Maurer both have the idea of conservation pretty well. Anyway, if
the ammunition began to run short they would naturally begin to confine
their shooting to large animals. It takes only one bullet to kill a
polar bear or a walrus, and such an animal will feed four or five men
for quite a while.

It was undeniably a disappointment not to be able to
reach them last fall, but I an looking for nothing more serious to
trouble them than lonesomeness. If they do get lonesome, they my come
across to the Siberian mainland in February or March. With their skill
in such things, they should make that journey safely and easily in
about four or five days. There are both American and Russian traders
on the north coast of Siberia - as you will have gathered from reading
Captain Bartlett’s account of his journey along that coast.

Please remember me to your wife and family and to the
two or three friends of yours whom I met there, especially the Doctor.

Mr. J. I. Knight,
McMinnville, Oregon.