stefansson-wrangel-09-15-044-003

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-3-

I couldn't help thinking again and again tonight as I was
talking to her how pretty and helpless she looked, lying in her berth - her
hair so dead black and her cheeks red -- I had to try hard to imagine her going
thru the Wrangell experience and coming out of it so well. This I noticed -
while there was anyone left, she never took the initiative in anything - as
soon as she was alone she began to act and to think for herself.

She thinks now if it doesn't cost more money she will go back to
Seattle by train - poor thing, she is wretched. She says she was sick for six
days coming out, so I don't blame her for wanting to go by train. She expects
to go north in June. She says she wishes she was in Nome - "it is cold in
Seattle. She has many colds - she never had a cold on Wrangell.

Bennett is trying to teach me Eskimo - he says horse, then
gives me the Eskimo word which I promptly forget and which he patiently repeats
for me. Ada smiling with pride. He is a cunning youngster and I take him up-
stairs with me and he amuses himself watching the gulls, calling them eider duck
and imitating their cry. He tells me he can ride on his reindeer, "holding on
to their horns and spanking them with his hands to make them go fast."

I can't imagine why I am making so many false starts in
this letter p the ship rolls a little and many people are about - it is a good
trip, beautifully sunny and bracing. I'm sorry Ada is laid up.

She told me today that she has a friend, his name is
Harvey and he is on the Alameda running to southeast Alaska - I think it is not
too good a thing for her to have a "friend."

Ada used a soft-pointed bullet for seal tho Knight told her
she must save the soft-nosed bullets in case she met polar bear - "Nanook",
bennett calls the bear.

"Knight is very weak, she has to hold up his head to give
him a drink at the last" - He does not shoot as well, she hears him say, he

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