stefansson-wrangel-09-31-123r

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THE FIRST AUTUMN ON WRANGEL ISLAND 201

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 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 re-
turn 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.

The climate of November and the first half of Decem-
ber in Wrangel Island seems to have been much like that
of December and January in Moscow or Chicago, varying
in November from freezing to ten or fifteen degrees be-
low zero and becoming on the average colder in December
until the coldest days would have been considered ex-
tremely cold and disagreeable in Chicago even in Montreal. But dressed
in furs, comfortably housed and used to an arctic climate,
Knight seems to have found the weather surprisingly
mild, although on the average stormier than he had ex-
pected. Even after an abundance of snow had fallen
there remained large bare patches on the ground where it
was swept clean by the wind, and sledging remained bad
until towards the middle of the 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
Eskimo dogs as they were, it was no great hardship for

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