stefansson-wrangel-09-25-007-008

8

five months before Knight recorded them in his diary, and, therefore
eight or nine months before it was carried out. Indeed,
(as said above). the plan had really been formed by us before
they sailed in 1921.

Perhaps the most fundamentally misleading of all the
many newspaper mistreatments pretending to be based on the
records of the expedition, is the one to the effect that the
journey on which Crawford, Galle, and Maurer were lost was from
Wrangell to Siberia, planned and undertaken on the spur of the
moment to secure food or help; on the contrary every reference to
it in Knight's diary says that the journey was to be from Wrangell
to Nome, Alaska, via Siberia, for the purpose of sending out a report to me
(Stefansson) and to carry out the plans as formulated before the
party sailed north.

A number of seals and polar bears were secured during
the Autumn. Two Walrus has been killed earlier, but some of the
meat had been lost accidentally - about a thousand pounds, or perhaos
hald, was saved. The diary shows that while the hunt was not
geing neglected, neither was it being stressed. An example is
that on the exploratory journeys where Knight had accompanied me
in earlier years, at least one man always stood watch outside
while the others slept so that bears that came in the night should
not escape. This precaution was never taken by the Wrangell party.
There are dozens of entries showing that bears came in the night
and escaped because no one was watching. It must be remembered
that for five months of the year the "night" has daylight,