stefansson-wrangel-09-31-034r

THE FATAL DRIFT OF THE KARLUK 33

because he did not have the ship’s papers when he wrote.
We have also omitted a few things which were pertinent
then but which would now only confuse the reader, and
we have corrected one or two errors into which Maurer
fell in common with nearly everyone else, as for instance
where he refers with apparent approval to the belief
common at that time that I was dead because I had been
absent on the ice to the north of Alaska for several
months when I had “planned to be gone for only ten
days.” The fact was, of course, that I had planned to be
gone for a year, but that an incorrect report of my
program had been circulated in such a way that the
Karluk party, who had not been in recent personal con-
tact with me, were led to believe, in common with the
rest of the public, that my two sledging companions and
I had starved to death.

There are reasons of sentiment also for taking part
of our story from Maurer. It was he who eventually
hauled up the British flag on Wrangel Island (July 1st,
1914). By his residence of seven months on Wrangel,
he was fired with a desire to be an instrument in redeem-
ing it from the unknown and bringing it within the circle
of lands that are used and valued. Mountain climbers
do not delight in their feats because they are easy, but
their pleasures are not therefore less real than the
lethargic joys of a winter resort. So it was with Maurer.
Wrangel Island had always been to him a difficult place.
There were hard times in 1914, but well before 1921 he
had begun to long for an opportunity to try himself
against these same difficulties again, just as the moun-
taineer wants to return to the fastnesses where he has
had perhaps his greatest disappointments. Maurer had
seen three of his companions die and he had dug their