stefansson-wrangel-09-26-001-031

25A
account of her drift in the appendix to that book.

We can, therefore, choose between many sources for the narrative
so be used now.
Most logical perhaps would be to use Hadley as the basis of it
all, but we have decided to tell the first part of the story in the words of
Frederick Maurer. If we used any of the other versions we should have to con-
dense for the purposes of this book; but Maurer has been so brief that we can
afford to print his statement without change, except minor editing as where names
are misspelled because he did not have the ship's papers when he wrote. We have
also omitted a few things which were pertinent then at the time but which would now only
confuse the reader, and we have corrected one or two errors into which Maurer at
that time fell in common with nearly everyone else, as for instance where he
refers with apparent approval conviction to the common belief at that time that I was dead
because I had been absent on the ice to the north of Alaska for several months
when I had "planned to be gone for only ten days." The fact was, of course, that
I had planned to be gone for a year but that an incorrect report of my progranmme
had been circulated in such a way that the Karluk party who had not been in
personal contact with me for a year were led to believe it in common with the rest of the public.

There are reasons of sentiment also for taking part of the our story
of Wrangell Island from Maurer. It was he who eventually hauled up the British
flag on Wrangell Island (July 1st, 1914). By his residence of seven months on
Wrangell he had been was fired with a desire to be an instrument in redeeming it from
the unknown and bringing it within the circle of lands that are used and valued.
Mountain climbers do not delight in their feats because they are easy, but their
pleasures are not therefore less real than the lethargic joys of a winter resort. So it
was with Maurer. Wrangell Island had always been to him a difficult place. There
were hard times in 1914, but long well before 1921 he had begun to long for an oppor-
tunity to try himself against these same difficulties again, just as the moun-