stefansson-wrangel-09-25-004-005

- 5 -

I knew the other dogs that helped the seventeen people to reach Wrangell
Island and that took the Captain and his one occupanion from there to
Siberia. I knew the men who died later on Wrangell Island and the men who
lived through. Some that died and some that lived were dear friends, and
the responsiblility for it all was mine in greater or less degree.

During the expedition there has always been at least
three theories aboard the Karluk as to almost anything that we did or
failed to do. James Murray and Forbes Mackay, veterans of the Antarctic,
had view from Shackleton's expedition which prevailed with them and con-
fused those whom they tried to convert. Bartlett had his opinions ideas gained
under the leadership of Peary and from association with the Greenland
Eskimos, who differ in many of their ideas and methods from those of Alaska,
Hadley and I had ideas developed in the western Arctic, partly from asso-
ciation with the local Eskimos, of whom there were five aboard, a single
man and a married man and his wife and two children. The scientific staff
and crew were divided and perplexed by these three sets of views.

As Hadley told me the story during long winter evenings,
we talked much of what should ahve been done and might have been done with
condemnation, approval or regret. When he wrote the story at my request
he naturally filled it with long discussions of what himself and others
had argued as to whether this or that were safe or wise. It has long been
the custom to publish certain historical documents only after the men con-
cerned with them are dead. Some time Hadley's manuscript will doubtless
be published as he wrote it. It will then be far more enlightening than
the fragments of it which we can publish now. Even so, I feel that Hadley
should be allowed to tell at least part of the story in his own words,
editorial discretion imposing silences in one place and softening a phrases here and there