stefansson-wrangel-09-25-008-007

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about given up hopes for a ship this year, "and there follows logically
the entry for September 22: "Crawford and I are starting to figure on a
trip across the ice to Siberia next spring and thence to the nearest wire-
less station, very likely Nome, but possibly Anadyr Bay south of East Cape.
We have only five dogs, but good ones; and a rather rickety sled which I
intend to overhaul as soon as we move to our new winter camp. We will have
another opportunity to demonstrate 'living off the country" which has never
failed yet as far as the Stefansson expeditions are concerned."

The same situation is stated in a letter addressed to me
by Allan Crawford, which is the only other record of the same plan that has
been saved from the general tragic destruction. Crawford's letter is dated
January 7, 1923: "My decision to leave here (Wrangell Island) was made last
year with advice of Knight and on consideration of orders received from you
(Stefansson) and the desirability of giving you news. In fact, as early as
last spring (1922) I considered it." This means that the plan had been in the
minds if not on the lips of the party four or five months before Knight
recorded it 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 misstatements 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