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on a coast, they are naturally in a line. The trapper leaves a cabin in the
morning and sleeps in the next one that night, reaching the third the next day,
and so on. Each cabin has a stove or fireplace and is equipped with a cooking
outfit and bedding. Since this is the method regularly and safely followed by
many dozens of experienced trappers, there is no reason why it should not be safe
and practical for explorers; it is only those who have no experience of the
country who think the risk involved considerable. To us who do such things every
day, the journeys between the cabins seem no more dangerous than an taxi rides
across a city.

What actually happened on Wrangell Island was that a trapping camp
was established about fifteen ten eight miles away from the main camp and occupied at first
by Crawford and Maurer, leaving Knight and Galle at the main base. Whenever one
or both of the men in either camp wished, they could walk to the other, visiting
on the way all the traps they had set, and watching as they went for polar bears.
The chance of getting bears at this season is not very great. The noon twilight
is ample for distinguishing black objects at a distance of several miles, but not
for seeing bears that are white against a white background. Still, if one is
constantly on the watch he is likely some time or other to meet a bear close
enough to see him.

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The climate of November and the first half of December in Wrangell
Island seems to have been much like that of December and January in Boston or
Chicago, varying in November from freezing to ten or fifteen degrees below zero
and becoming on the average colder in December until the coldest days would have
been considered extremely cold and disagreeable in Chicago. But dressed in furs,
comfortably housed and used to an arctic climate, Knight seems to have found the
weather surprisingly mild, although on the average stormier than he had expected.
Even after an abundance of snow had fallen there remained large bare patches on
the ground where it was swept clean by the wind, and sledging remained bad until