stefansson-wrangel-09-25-006-042

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- 42 -

and that we are doing the right thing in making this trip."

Unlike the previous year, there was enough snowfall the
autumn of 1922 but it was so windy that much of the ground, nevertheless,
remained bare and unfit for sledging, so that it was not until early in November
that the business of moving camp from the old site to the new was completed.
So far as housing is concerned, this seems to have been the only uncomfortable
period on the island. They were still tenting on the old campsite and did not
build an outer house over the tents because they were each day expecting that
they would move to-morrow.

Every other day or so there is a mention of a sledge
load of provisions or equipment being hauled from the old camp to the new
but we are not told the exact quantity. The only hint is that on November 12th
"we have twenty-six boxes of hard bread left and about three weeks of dog
feed. A large amount of seal oil left." Apparently by dog feed is meant the
half-decayed meat left from last summer. By the large amount of seal oil Knight
probably means about a ton, for that is the quantity that would naturally
result from the number of seals killed during the summer, the bears doubtless
yielding an equivalent of the fat that the dogs had been eating. We have no
record of the size of the hard bread boxes, but fifty pounds is a common
size, so that likely they had 1300 pounds. Hundred-pound boxes and hundred and
twenty-pound ones are also common, so that the amount may have been double our
estimate. There must have been a good many other items of food. There is
a common arctic custom apparently originated by the Eskimos but followed by many
white people, to state food supplies in terms of the one item that is considered
the staple. Ordinarily an Eskimo will tell you that he has so many sacks of
flour. If the statement is unmodified, it means that in addition he has fifteen
or twenty other items of food in proportions that are generally understood.

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