stefansson-wrangel-09-29-017

169

of groceries for six months would be all that it was reasonable to carry towards
the two-year program of a party who believed that they could be self-supporting
indefinitely by hunting. In other words, we considered that supplies for even
six months were luxuries and, as luxuries, were about all they should reasonably
allow themselves. At that time they had been saying that they preferred to spend
what money we had for phonographs, of which they were all fond, and for candies, and
chocolate, and chewing gum, to which some of them were partial.

There had been two motives for planning that fox trapping should
be carried on energetically throughout the winter. We were not quite certain of
getting Government support next year, so that any money we could earn might be
needed towards our expenses, and we desired to demonstrate that an occupation of
the island could be made profitable along such old-fashioned lines as have been
followed by the Hudson's Bay Company and other traders in the Arctic. Not that we
were much concerned with the value of Wrangell as a trapping island, but we
wanted to show that it had also this additional merit.

The entry for November 7th indicates that a good many traps had
been set already but references to them throughout the winter show that, while
foxes were numerous, the trapping was not very successful. This is not surprising,
for the two experienced arctic men, Knight and Maurer, had never seen trapping
done. They had been members of a scientific expedition to which were attached a
few Eskimos. From the zoological point of view we had wanted foxes and these
had been caught for us chiefly by the Eskimos or by one or two old white
trappers who were with us. I have never set a trap in all my eleven arctic years and
I do not suppose either Knight or Maurer ever had. The theory was so simple,
however, that success might have been expected. But one peculiarity of the
Wrangell Island weather brought a difficulty which they do not seem to have
found a way to meet. So far as we can judge from the diary, the traps were
set according to a method successful where the snow lies soft on the spot where it falls. But in an open island