stefansson-wrangel-09-29-051

200

on a cloudless day that there is daylight enough at this time of year for
reading or shooting for four or five hours around noon. On a cloudy day a
white thing like a polar bear is very difficult to see.

In the entry for Christinas Eve we have the first, and only an
indirect, suggestion that the party felt the danger of provisions running short.
"We are celebrating by having an extra hard bread or so apiece. The snow roof
was completed to-day, excepting the door, and it is nice and comfortable in here
to-night." Other entries explain that the long delay in completing the outer
house was due to the absence of suitable snow in the vicinity of the camp. They
could have hauled snow blocks from a distance on the sledge but apparently the
discomfort of an uncovered tent did not seem to them to justify the bother.

We have incorporated into the story in full every mention con-
tained in the diary that relates in any way to the proposed trip to Nome. On
December 25th the subject comes up again. "I finished the complete set of dog
harness for the trip and Crawford is busy making ridge-pole and upright for the
tent” - doubtless the tent which they intended to carry with them to use if they
had to camp where there was insufficient snow for building a snowhouse. The
next day, "Crawford working on the tent and I brought the sled indoors and made
several repairs on it. Hope to finish it to-morrow. Snowing hard, so the
trappers stayed in camp to-day." Before that time the 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. We would like to get started
soon but the ground is covered with about six inches of floury snow and we intend
to wait for a blow to pack it."

December 31st, after weather that had usually been good for two