stefansson-wrangel-09-24-002-002

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died in South Africa. But in the method and true spirit
of the past, adventure goes on today. If we do not see
the romance, it is but from for lack of perspective.

The adventure of holding Wrangell Island for the
British Empire until such time as the whole world comes
to realise the possibilities and future importance of the
Arctic, has been as romantic as any. This particular
campaign in the war to abolish the Arctic fired the enthusiasm
of my men perhaps more than it did mine, for my own battle-
front was rather in the realm of the imagination. I had
long realised that before I could hope to interest the
public even in Wrangell Island I must get it, however
reluctantly, to give up its traditional inheritance of mis-
conceptions about the very nature of the polar regions,
must hatch out new word-associations and induce new concepts.

By 1920 Fred Maurer, one of the veterans of my third
expedition, had been through the war and through enough of
the succeeding peace to be tired of it, and eager for the
Arctic. This is a malady which afflicts all northern
explorers, in part negative, inasmuch as it is a weariness
with our industrial routine, but in the main a positive
passion for the North, for winters which exhilerate like a
cold shower-bath, for pure air that stimulates beyond even
the intoxication exhilaration of the middle heights of the Alps, for
adventure and discovery. Maurer kept writing begging that
I should lead another expedition or in some way help him to

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