stefansson-wrangel-09-25-008-015

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Samara Cary at Feb 14, 2024 07:02 PM

stefansson-wrangel-09-25-008-015

- 15 -

he wrote it. For the next several days he evidently thought of Crawford,
Galle and Maurer as traveling steadily toward Siberia; and after that he
supposed them to be passing in ease and affluence from settlement to settle-
ment along the Siberian coast toward the telegraphs at home. He speculates
on what I will think and do when I receive Crawford’s report about Wrangell
Island. So easy in their minds were both he and the Eskimo woman, Ada,
that even after Knight's death she never doubted the safety of the others.
When the supply ship landed six months after the party left, to find her
watching alone by Knight’s body, her first and constantly repeated question
was not if they were safe but where were they? As I write, I have just been
talking with her in Seattle. She is still firm in the belief that they are
alive. "Why should they die?" she asks. "They were well clothed, they
had rifles, they had food, and the natives on the Siberian coast are kind
to travelers," But she thinks badly of the Russians and insists: "How do
you know they are not prisoners among the Russians? If they are dead, how
do you know the Russians did not kill them?"

But we feel sure that the kindness of the Russians on
the north coast of Siberia is equal to the kindness of the natives. If,
through some confused notion of the international issues at stake, they had
taken the party prisoners, they would have made no secret of it and would have
treated them humanly. We also have direct testimony from others than Russians.
Captain Aarnout Castel, a member of my 1913-18 arctic expedition for five
years, a comrade on it and friend of Knight and Maurer, was wintering on the
coast south of Wrangell. With him was another comrade of Knight's on
Storkerson's great sea-ice journey of our 1913-18 expedition, August Masik,
himself a Russian. Both say there is no chance of anyone landing on the coast
without everybody knowing about it.

Knight's entry, "blowing a howling gale," may therefore

stefansson-wrangel-09-25-008-015

- 15 -

he wrote it. For the next several days he evidently thought of Crawford,
Galle and Maurer as traveling steadily toward Siberia; and after that he
supposed them to be passing in ease and affluence from settlement to settle-
ment along the Siberian coast toward the telegraphs at home. He speculates
on what I will think and do when I receive Crawford’s report about Wrangell
Island. So easy in their minds were both he and the Eskimo woman, Ada,
that even after Knight's death she never doubted the safety of the others.
When the supply ship landed six months after the party left, to find her
watching alone by Knight’s body, her first and constantly repeated question
was not if they were safe but where were they? As I write, I have just been
talking with her in Seattle. She is still firm in the belief that they are
alive. "Why should they die?" she asks. "They were well clothed, they
had rifles, they had food, and the natives on the Siberian coast are kind
to travelers," But she thinks badly of the Russians and insists: "How do
you know they are not prisoners among the Russians? If they are dead, how
do you know the Russians did not kill them?"

But we feel sure that the kindness of the Russians on
the north coast of Siberia is equal to the kindness of the natives. If,
through some confused notion of the international issues at stake, they had
taken the party prisoners, they would have made no secret of it and would have
treated them humanly. We also have direct testimony from others than Russians.
Captain Aarnout Castel, a member of my 1913-18 arctic expedition for five
years, a comrade on it and friend of Knight and Maurer, was wintering on the
coast south of Wrangell. With him was another comrade of Knight's on
Storkerson's great sea-ice journey of our 1913-18 expedition, August Masik,
himself a Russian. Both say there is no chance of anyone landing on the coast
without everybody knowing about it.

Knight's entry, "blowing a howling gale," may therefore