stefansson-wrangel-09-29

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By the middle of November there was plenty of snow for sledging along the beach, for snowhouse building and for trapping. The time had accordingly come for the establishment of a second camp both to increase the chances of success in hunting and to give more variety to their island life. November 17th they were "All ready to start with the trapping outfit" and on November 18th “Crawford, Maurer and I left camp at 6:15 A.M. and traveled east for three hours through heavy, soft snow. Reached a small cove where wood seemed plentiful, so stopped and erected a frame of driftwood for the 8 x 10 tent. Not having had any sleep the night previous, we turned in early and the 19th we hauled wood and cut blocks for the walls [of the house within which they intended to pitch the tent]. The snow was poor about the camp so blocks had to be cut on the hillside about two hundred feet away. At dark it started to blow and xkeh snow and we were forced to quit but we had by that time put all the blocks on one side of the house. We finally decided that I should return to the main camp on the next morning, the 20th, which I did."

"During the night of the 19th and 20th one of the dogs named Snowball went crazy and became very dangerous, fighting with the other dogs and snapping at the men. He will not eat and continually barks at nothing. There is nothing that I can do as far as I know." This dog died soon thereafter.

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towards the middle of the year winter.

The diary relates that from day to day they made their camp more comfortable and convenient for themselves but that the dogs were still without shelter. Well-furred Eskimos dogs as they were it was no great hardship for them to sleep out. But December 12th it was storming and there was nothing else to do, so the boys built a house for the dogs with a separate alcove for each of the seven, and connected it by a covered passageway with their own house so that a certain amount of warmth might pass through. Knight does not explain it but, according to our customary way of doing things, they doubtless arranged that the dog house was on a higher level than the living quarters of the people, the result being that as a part of the ventilation system the warm air that was going out of the house passed through the alleyway and through the dog house on its way to the outdoors. Knight was always very thoughtful about the comfort of animals and his diary shows that he took a keen interest in this provision for the increased welfare of the team. He was feeding them warm cooked food every day. That was not a kindness, for the dogs would doubtless have preferred frozen meat and the boys knew that very well; but meat was short just then and the dogs as well as the men had to live on groceries.

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Although the best season for bears was over, there were stragglers around in December. But in most cases some accident allowed them to feet away - usually the inadequate light and the fact that they ordinarily came around at night. The entry for December 13th is typical although it records better fortune than ordinary. “Arose early to go sealing but there was a fresh breeze from the north, cloudy and foggy, consequently nearly dark (even at noon). Galle went to his traps and I went to the trapping camp (of Crawford and Maurer) to haul them a big log for firewood. A bear had been at their camp yesterday and had tried to come into their storm shed, but he left rather hurriedly after some ineffectual shooting. It was nearly dark when I started home, blowing a gale

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from the north and drifting so thick that at times I could not see the leader. But, like the good dog he is, he did not leave the trail once. But the best news of all I received from Galle. Coming home about an hour before me he saw a bear alongside the house eating some walrus skin. He shot and hit it but the bear did not stop until Galle fired again.... It was skinned and cut up when I got home.”

December 16: "l went to the other camp, taking them some bear meat, and hauled some wood for them. Galle went to the traps but got nothing. He saw a bear . . . but before he could get within shooting distance it turned out on the sea ice and escaped." "Maurer and Crawford are planning coming to this camp for Christmas."

On December 24th: "I went to the other camp and found that a bear had been there this morning while they were asleep but before they got out it had become frightened and had run away." Such entries are numerous and show that the party were still extremely optimistic. On journeys when Knight had been with me and on others of which he must have heard us talking frequently, we used to take turns day and night watching so that no animal that approached camp had a chance to get away. There is not a single entry in Knight's diary to indicate that they even considered doing this. Evidently they continued to feel that it did not make much difference how many chances they missed; there would always be an abundance of other chances. Wrangell Island was to them still a game paradise beyond anything they had experienced or heard about, and they took it for granted it would always continue so.

No one who has kept a diary on an exploring expedition will be surprised or critical because Knight leaves the most important things to be inferred from the context or to be detected by some casual reference later. My experience, at least, has been that although I keep more voluminous notes than most travelers, still the things that stick in my memory after a lapse of years are usually the ones that have never been mentioned in the record of the day. So it

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comes about that Knight records how himself, Galle and the Eskimo woman were looking forward to Christmas eagerly, chiefly because Crawford and Maurer were coming home to spend it with them,and goes on to tell how Ada was singing all day at her sewing and how she cooked and prepared in every way for Christmas, but does not mention the actual arrival of Crawford and Maurer nor anything about the Christmas itself except, “Spending the day doing nothing but eating although we are not hungry."

There is further inferred evidence of the Christmas rejoicings. The party had long been waiting eagerly impatiently for a wind that would break the ice near shore and give them open water for sealing. Such a wind finally did come Christmas night but Knight's diary for December 26th explains laconically, "Open water to be seen but overslept. Hauled wood to-day." That means that they had slept until one or two in the afternoon, or just beyond the four-hour period of adequate daylight, but that they did get up in time so there was a little twilight left, not enough for shooting but ample for hauling in a sledgeload or two of wood.

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December 27th was a day of tragedy and foreboding. There are in the polar regions a number of insidious diseases which take off our dogs mysteriously. We have many folklore remedies from Eskimos, and from the miners and dog drivers of Alaska but none of them do anything except give a temporary peace of mind to those who have faith in them. Next to the loss of a human companion is that of a dog. Even when we have several teams with half a hundred dogs, each impresses us so strongly with his distinct personality that the loss of one is the loss of an acquaintance or a friend. With a team of only seven six dogs the intimacy is closer and the affection warmer. The proportionate loss, too, is greater when it is one of seven six instead of one of fifty. To those who knew both Knight and the Arctic there is a good deal of restraint in the entry for December 27th: "I went out to look at the dogs and found one of them dead. We hauled wood (yesterday) and at one time I thought I saw him stagger slightly

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Positive of cat and walrus head.

While we are on the subject of important tilings that are not mentioned in diaries, we might as well discuss the expedition cat, named Victoria,or Vic for short. She must have occupied an important place in the thoughts and affections of the Wrangell Island community and still she never appears once in the two volumes of the diary. Knight did tell a good deal about her in one of his letters to his parents,and in the photographic collection she appears more often than any member of the expedition.

The name Victoria seems to have come from the circumstance that the kitten was presented to the expedition by the crew of the steamer Victoria on the voyage from Seattle to Nome. Every photograph shows her apparently fat and flourishing.

There is acurious parallel in the experience of the cats that belonged to the two Wrangell Island expeditions. When the Karluk was being outfitted in Victoria in 1913 someone made us the present of a kitten. She was well taken care of and grew to maturity on the voyage north and during the Karluk's adventurous drift until the shipwreck near Wrangell Island in January, 1914. When the ship had to be abandoned because the water was rushing into the engine room, the cat was not forgotten. Someone slipped her under his coat and when the temporary cabin had been built on the floe beside the gap in the ice through which the Karluk had sunk she was given a snug corner. I think it was Ered Maurer who later carried her ashore. Certainly I have heard from the men who were on the island that summer that he did more than his part in looking after the cat. Through all the vicissitudes of that difficult time she remained safe, and when the King and Winge came to pick up the marooned party Maurer took the cat with him to Nome and Victoria and eventually to his home in Ohio where at last reports she was still safe and contented although now growing