stefansson-wrangel-09-21-006-001

Noice

New York
Oct 16/24

On my return last week from Brazil
where I have spent six months, mainly in
recuperating after a very severe attack
of nervous prostration, I have re-read the
documents of the Wrangel Island Expedition
with the exception of Milton Galle's diary;
and I have also re-read the stories which
appeared in the papers of the North American
Newspaper Alliance over my signature. I
am glad to take this opportunity of correcting
some misjudgments. The general impression
of these stories is not that which I wanted
to give and thought I was giving. Having spent
a number of years in the Arctic and loving
the Arctic and believing in it as a habitable
place, I wanted to show that Wrangel Island
was valuable, a very good game country,
a desireable place to live, as we Northerners
judge places. But the general effect of my
stories seems to lose that idea in some
sensational writing which I now think
overemphasizes the "hardships" of the
North.

Those stories were given out verbally in
interviews (not written) by me at a time when
I was in a serious nervous condition.
They were based on a far too hasty reading