stefansson-wrangel-09-25-003-016

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16

map the name of Wrangell Island, cancelling the designation of Kellett
Land which the island had borne for 32 years apparently chiefly to em-
phasize that British discovery rights were considered to have lapsed
through prolonged neglect and that American rights were being created
in their stead through exploration. and temporary occupation.

Following 1849 Wrangell Island (Kellett's Land) had been British
by a discovery right that gradually lost its value through neglect,
until the Americans (or any other nation) were free to occupy it; fol
lowing 1881 the island was similarly U.S. territory. But it seems
elementary logic that if 32 years of British neglect cancel British
rights, an equally long period of neglect by any other nation would
cancel the rights of that nation. It is not known We do not know of any printed record that any human
beings landed on Wrangell Island for 33 years following the American
landing in 1881, although it seems likely that of all the many whaler American whalers who cruised in sight of the island between 1881 and the end of the whaling industry about 1906, some might have made a landing. and so it became Still, Wrangell Island is considered to have become once more a "No Man's Land" open
to colonization by any country that cared to go to that much trouble
for the sake of acquiring ownership.

In 1912 I had just returned from a four-year Arctic expedition
that had been successful enough so that I found myself in a position
to organize another. I formulated ambitious plans which were laid
before the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the
National Geographic Society in Washington. These organizations,
together with the Harvard Travellers’ Club of Boston, gave me $50,000
dollars; and two wealthy men of Philadelphia, largely through the
advocacy of my friend, Henry G. Bryant, president of the Philadelphia
Geographical Society
, were going to give me, one of them a ship which
I had already selected, and the other money enough to take her through
dry-dock into a first-rate condition. But I was a Canadian by birth
and my two previous expeditions had been supported by the University
of Toronto
and the Geological Survey of Canada. I was anxious that
my native country should again cooperate, and laid my plans accordingly

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