stefansson-wrangel-09-31-011v

INTRODUCTION
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My son, E. Lorne Knight, on whose diary this book is
chiefly based, had had some wonderful experiences when
he was with Mr. Stefansson for four years in the Arctic
on a previous expedition and they all pass through my
mind in a kaleidoscopic view as I write this introduction.

In 1915, Lorne went north as a member of the crew of
the whaling schooner Polar Bear, Captain Louis L. Lane,
owner and master, for a season’s whaling in the Arctic.
On August 17, the ship connected with Mr. Stefansson
at Cape Kellett, on Banks Land, and was bought by him.
Thus Lome became a member of the Canadian Arctic
Expedition. His discharge was dated, to a day, four
years after his enlistment.

In company with Mr. Stefansson, Lorne and Harold
Noice and an Eskimo travelled over the ice to a point
at 80 degrees 28 minutes North, in the spring of 1917.
On this trip, Noice was the first to develop scurvy, but
Lorne developed the same a few days later, and they
came near dying from the disease. I am convinced that
had it not been for the recurrence of this disease in
Lorne, on Wrangel Island, there would have been no
tragedy, because the party would have been able to sur-
vive the difficulties of living off the country if he had
kept well.

I base my opinion for this assertion on the fact that
Lorne was none the worse for the experience of scurvy
in 1917, for traveling the same summer on the ice, when
he waded from knee to waist-deep for hours each day in
the water on top of the ice, from having lain in a snow
house for nine days with frozen feet, with no food except
raw oatmeal, while a blizzard raged outside, and from
having gone with Storker Storkerson and three other
companions more than two hundred miles North from