stefansson-wrangel-09-24-002

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former expeditions, who believe as firmly as I do that one good hunter can provide food for ten dependants so long as his ammunition holds out - and they have plenty of ammunition. However, two of the men are new and two years is a long time to be alone on an island that has never had human dwellers since the world began. In their own minds they my men are patriots engaged in a public service which farsighted men should appreciate now and which the whole world will appreciate eventually. They will therefore be unable to understand why they should be neglected. From June until September 1922 they probably climbed the highest hills every day watching with their field glasses for the ship that did not come. The ice was there to show them that it could not come and so I consider that they faced cheerfully the winter of 1922-23, because the responsibility of their isolation lay with Providence.

But it is on the average only one year in twenty that enough ice is driven in between Wrangell and Siberia to bar a ship that wants to approach. The ocean is therefore probably open now, and again they are climbing the hills watching for a sail. If none comes they will be face to face with their third Arctic winter - the longest period of isolation of men without a ship in the history of Polar exploration. The only adventure comparable is that of Sir John Franklin, whose men had two well-found ships which they

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abandoned at the end of the third winter, dying to the last man.

But a ship has sailed at last. The Donaldson, under command of Harold Noice, one of the veterans of my last polar expedition, has left Nome, Alaska, for Wrangell Island, 500 miles to the north-west. We did not announce her sailing date and we cannot announce her route, for we have had communications from the Soviet Government at Anadyr, North East Siberia, which made caution advisable. They notified Noice that before sailing from Nome he would have to send a wireless message asking permission from the Anadyr Government. This permission, the message stated, would be granted on condition that he would call at East Cape, Siberia, on the way to Wrangell Island, to pick up a contingent of Red Guards to take to the island, where they were to confiscate all property of the British party. This message is especially extraordinary since it is clear (as we have shown in the articles published in the Spectator of June 9th and June 16th) that the British claim to the island is strongest, the American second and the Russian a very bad third. Had Noice agreed to carry the Red Guards to Wrangell they would probably have been the first Russians who ever set foot in that island.

Upon the transmission to me of the Russian message I