stefansson-wrangel-09-25-007-013

`18.

The diary entries at this time are lengthy and
full of details that will all be printed in a letter book narrative,
but here we can note only the most significant points. On January
8th, Knight says, "In all, we have about thirty days' rations and
by then we should be in Siberia" - a more than reasonable estimate
as Bartlett was known to them to have made the same journey from
Wrangell to the Siberian settlements in twelve days. The food was
pilot bread, dried meat and seal’s fat, with four new sealskins
with fat attached - the last a form of dog feed that we frequently
use, a "balanced ration" for the hide gives the protein and the
attached fat the hydrocarbon. The load was 700 lbs. in addition
to the sledge.

The entries for the first few days are of routine
nature, indicating that the trip so far was to Knight only an ordi-
nary journey, the success of which (reaching Nome, Alaska, to send
me a telegraphic report of the two past years and get instructions
for the next year) was in no doubt. Among the cheerful entries,
troubles begin to appear, however. On January 9th, "(We) did
nothing but sleep all day as both Crawford and I were badly chafed
and sore. A rather poor excuse, but the only one we have!"

The only complaints in the diary are (as quoted
above) that the dogs were "soft" because of having had no exercise
for a long time, and that the sledge was weak for the very heavy
load they carried. They realized later that they had made a mistake
in weighing the themselves down and endangering the sledge with thirty