stefansson-wrangel-09-32-009r

THE FIRST WINTER AND SECOND SUMMER 225

animals could be relied upon to supply fresh meat in
the fall.

Knight’s account of the weather the summer of 1922
reads strangely. Either it must have been a very excep-
tional summer in Wrangel Island or else Wrangel Island
has a very exceptional kind of arctic climate. I have
been in northern islands of varying size, some the same
latitude as Wrangel and others as much as five hundred
miles farther north, and in these it has been the rule, as
it generally is in the northern hemisphere, that June is
warmer than May, and July warmer still. But the
Wrangel summer of 1922, the latter part of May was the
warmest period of the summer. There were frequent
snow squalls in June, and even in July, with the tem-
perature seldom more than ten degrees above freezing,
and going down below freezing at night not infrequently.
Certainly the season must have been very different from
that of 1921, for when the party landed that year they
saw only a little snow on the highest of the distant moun-
tains, but in 1922 large patches of snow were constant
on the ridges inland.

During the summer the party devoted most of the time
to hunting seals, geese and ducks, but they also made
several exploratory journeys. On June 28th, for
instance, “Crawford, with one dog to pack his blankets,
started west to look for a pass through the mountains.
I went a short way with him and saw several seals to
the west on the ice.” Evidently Knight was leaving
Crawford to tell the story in his own diary, for the only
further mention of this inland reconnaissance is under
head of July 3rd: “Maurer got one seal and killed
another which slid into its hole. I took a walk to the
west and met Crawford coming home. Galle spent the