stefansson-wrangel-09-29-048

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197

have to take a chance and go, for very likely if he is wintering on the main-
land we will hear of him and his ship and will go there. If one can go by
hunches, my hunch tells me that Stefansson did not come north this summer and
that we are doing the right thing in making the trip."

Unlike the previous year, there was enough snowfall the autumn
of 1922, but it was so windy that much of the ground, nevertheless, remained bare
and unfit for sledging, so that it was not until early in November that the business
of moving camp from the old site to the new was completed. So far as housing is
concerned, this seems to have been the only uncomfortable period on the island.
They were still tenting on the old camp|site and did not build an outer house over
the tents because they were each day expecting that they could move tomorrow.

Every other day or so there is mention of a sledge load of
provisions or equipment being hauled from the old camp to the new but we are not
told the exact quantity. The only hint is that on November 12th “We have twenty-
six boxes of hard bread left and about three weeks of dog feed. A large amount
of seal oil left." Apparently by dog feed is meant the half-decayed meat left
from last summer. By the large amount of seal oil Knight probably means about
a ton, for that is the quantity that would result from the number of seals and
bears killed during the summer. We have no record of the size of the hard bread
boxes, but fifty pounds is a common size, so that likely they had 1300 pounds.
Hundred-pound boxes and hundred and twenty-pound ones are also common, so that
the amount may have been double our estimate. There must have been a good many
other items of food. There is a common arctic custom, apparently originated
by the Eskimos but followed by many whites, to state food supplies in terms of
the one item that is considered the staple. Ordinarily an Eskimo will tell you
that he has so many sacks of flour. If the statement is unmodified, it means
that in addition he has fifteen or twenty other items of food in proportions that

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