stefansson-wrangel-09-25-008

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diary tells us almost every day that two or three of the boys were out tending traps. Sometimes they came in with foxes and sometimes only with the reports of bear tracks and fox tracks seen.

On December 27th, "the sled and tent in good shape and all that is left for us to do is to get our outfit together."

January 4th we have the next mention of the trip. "I have been busy packing up to-day as we hope to get away in a day or two." January 7th, "Crawford and I spent the day getting ready, loading the sled, getting things together, etc., Maurer and Galle to their traps. Maurer got a fox and saw several tracks."

Then we have abruptly under date of January 7th, "At 1 P.M. Crawford and I started over fine going and making good time. We traveled south an hour and hit broken-up young ice with soft snow in between. The moon is about one-quarter on the wane and it was slightly misty. After numerous tip-overs because of increasing darkness, we camped. Our load is rather heavy and the dogs soft from inaction. We lost one of our two ice picks and a pot lid. Rather a bad start."

The diary entries at this time are lengthy and full of details that will all be printed in a later 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 carbohydrate. The load was 700 lbs. in addition to the sledge.

The entries for the first few days are of routine nature.

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indicating that the trip so far was to Knight only an ordinary journey, the success of which (reaching Nome 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 themselves down and endangering the sledge with thirty days' provisions - fifteen days' would have been plenty; they could then have traveled less laboriously, faster and without fear of breaking the sledge.

January 12, after traveling about thirty miles (three days on the road and two in camp), we have the first mention of the trouble that was to prove serious. Knight was weak with illness. “I am nearly all in. I hate to admit this, but I am sure I can't help it. My scurvy has been coming back for the last month or two, although I have said nothing to anyone about it except Crawford. When we started I was in hopes of fairly good going and a chance to get fresh meat, which is a cure for scurvy, but I find that my legs go back on me in this rough ice where I am forced to get in harness to help the dogs and to prevent the sled upsetting. I am afraid of the sled which is none too strong. Our gait on level ice is about two and a half miles per hour." This is an average speed for dogs heavily loaded and shows the team were in at least fair condition.

Now for the first time we get evidence that they are beginning to feel that the plans of the party should be modified because of shortage of food. "This is what we have planned to do. We will go back to

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camp and lighten the sled load as much as possible (so there will be less danger of breaking the sled) and Crawford and Galle will start south and make as much time as they possibly can. It will be impossible for all of us to stay at the main camp, for there is just enough grub there for three people to last until the seals and birds come. [This is the first explicit statement in the diary of the secondary motive for the Nome journey — in addition to reporting progress by telegraph. The argument that having some of the party go away would relieve the island commissariat must have begun to present itself about Christmas, as we can infer from the entries of that time indirectly.] I would like to make this trip but I really do not feel able. This is just a rough outline of our plans; more later. A fairly fresh bear track seen going east.”

January 20th they were "Home again, finding the three people comfortably living in the 10x12 tent. Wonderful going. Saw the sun today (its first appearance after the midnight twilight)."

On January 21, "The woman is busy making clothing. It has been decided that Crawford, Maurer and Galle will attempt in a few days to go to Nome via Siberia. I will remain here as camp keeper for the reason that I think I would be unwise to attempt the said trip, because of illness. It is impossible for two men to make the trip, I think, with only five dogs, but as grub is short here, it is essential for the party to split. It is very likely that Stefansson will be expecting news from us this spring, for when we left him in Seattle (in August, 1921) he suggested the trip. The woman and I will have about six hard bread each per day until the seals and birds arrive. This is not counting what foxes I hope to catch on the two trap lines that I intend to take over, or perhaps a bear. We will also have about five hundred pounds of seal fat and five or six gallons of bear oil."

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The entries from January 22nd to January 27th are routine, the making of clothing, tending of fox traps, etc.

On January 28th: "They’re off. At 9:10 A.M., a nice clear day, warmer than usual and all in their favor. They were going due south when last seen, and were soon out of sight."

January 29: "Blowing a howling gale from the east. This is very comfortable and a little wood goes a long way. Yesterday and to-day I have been busy fixing the place up, making it convenient for two people. Now we are well fixed until the snow starts to melt in the spring. All of the boxes outside will then have to be cleaned out (the snow removed from them), the roof and walls of the house dug away, and numerous other things will keep us busy. If only a bear would wander into camp, we would be fixed in great shape, for with only two of us and no dogs a bear would go a long way. In a couple of months the females will be coming out of their holes with their cubs and then we should have plenty of meat. My left leg just above the knee is considerably swollen and is giving me some pain. Whether it is from scurvy or not, I am not sure, and although it does not lay me up, it makes moving rather painful. Fresh meat will fix me up, I am sure."

This, the day after the party left, is on the whole a cheerful entry, and also one which gives an answer to many of the questions that have been asked since the tragic outcome was published. Few of the theories that have pleased the journalists can be held except by ignoring this and several other entries of the same sort. On the basis of them the reader can form his own conclusions without editorial help.

But in that cheerful entry the first sentence is ominous to us, though the context shows it did not have that meaning to Knight as

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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 settlement 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