stefansson-wrangel-09-25-008-005

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- 5 -

pasturage," both of flowering and non-flowering plants, though the flowering
ones doubtless prevail as they do in most parts of the arctic contrary to
the old belief which has mosses and lichens as the chief northern vegetation.
Fossil ivory, both walrus and mammoth, is found in considerable quantities,
both near the coast and inland.

The surprising thing about the diary for the summer is the
absence of speculations as to whether a supply ship would come. Even I who knew
their plans well, and who knew Knight and Maurer intimately, am surprised at
this. That summer I was trying to arouse interest among Canadians in the
patriotic little advance guard of their countrymen who had been led by a vision
of the approaching development of transpolar air commerce to undertake keeping
Canadian right alive in Wrangell Island, and I used, quite sincerely, the argu-
ment that if no ship were sent to them in 1922 they would feel themselves
deserted and disowned by the country they were trying to serve. I used to
describe them standing on the highest hilltops every day of the summer and
autumn scanning the ocean for a sail. I cannot even now believe that this
picture was wholly incorrect, but it must be said there is little support for it
in Knight's diary. It seems, on the contrary, that they had taken more to heart
than I had myself what I had said to them before they sailed north about the
possibility that I might fail in 1922 to get the money for a ship to communi-
cate with them. Unable myself to believe that I could fail to arouse either
the public or the government of Canada, I had taken the precaution nevertheless
to remind them forcibly of that possibility. That I had done so I had for-
gotten, but they had not.

I did not really quite fail with the Canadian Government -
it was only that my importunities did not prevail till the season was nearly
over. But it turned out that the ocean ice as seen from Wrangell Island had
been so impregnably massed the whole summer that the Wrangell party considered
that no ship could come and that it was therefore immaterial whether a ship had

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