stefansson-wrangel-09-25-006-047

- 47 - traveled east, for you will see on any map that the farther east you follow the coast of [[Wrangel Island (Russia)|Wrangell Island]] the farther away you are from the Siberian coast. To one who considers traveling over sea ice dangerous or difficult, the obvious thing would be to go west where the southwest corner of [[Wrangel Island (Russia)|Wrangell]] [[Wrangel Island (Russia)|Island]] is only between ninety and a hundred miles from the [[Siberia (Russia)|Siberian coast]] where the traders and natives live. But we must remember that the party was going on [[Knight, Errol Lorne, 1893-1923|Knight's]] advice. [[Knight, Errol Lorne, 1893-1923|Knight's]] judgment was necessarily based upon his experience and he had traveled so many months and so many hundreds of miles over shifting sea ice that it had no special terrors for him. The diary shows that the objective was [[Siberia (Russia)|Siberia]] only incidentally and [[Nome (Alaska)|Nome]] primarily. Traveling east you get nearer and nearer to [[Nome (Alaska)|Nome]]. He probably thought also that the ice in the straits between [[Wrangel Island (Russia)|Wrangell]] and [[Siberia (Russia)|Siberia]] would be the most broken and mobile where the channel is narrowest, and on that basis it is reasonable to go east before crossing. Contrary to some other commentators, I find nothing in this plan of [[Knight, Errol Lorne, 1893-1923|Knight's]] to disagree with until several days later they decided to turn back. I would have been in hearty agreement if this had meant dis- continuing any attempt to go to [[Siberia (Russia)|Siberia]], for I should not have considered the possible gain from that trip to be worth the trouble and effort. But having traveled east and still keeping in mind the purpose of going to [[Nome (Alaska)|Nome]], they should certainly have struck south at all hazards when their farthest east was reached. Going west again and making a fresh start from the southwest corner of the [[Wrangel Island (Russia)|island]] would necessarily tire the dogs if it had no other result. As provisions were not abundant, it was not easy to feed up the dogs to bring them back again to their original strength and freshness. For dog feed like man food has to be adequate not only in quantity but in kind. They seem to have had little for the dogs at this stage except hard bread and seal oil, which will do for a few days as an emergency ration but will not keep up