stefansson-wrangel-09-32-056r

APPENDIX I

The Fragmentary Papers of Milton Galle

After the rest of this book had been written there came to light
some fragmentary papers bearing on the period between July 18
and September 30, 1922. That these had not been examined
before was not through any fault of Mr. Harold Noice. In
fact, it was he who brought them to our attention. Both in writing
and speech he was known to have made several references to the
“diary” of Milton Galle, but at that time we supposed that he had
this diary and was keeping it away from us along with the portions
he had torn out of the diary of Lorne Knight. Mr. Carl Lomen
made inquiries at my suggestion and Mr. Noice told him that he
had been referring only to some scraps of paper that contained
little if anything of value. Then came Mr. Noice’s published
statement in the New York World of February 11, 1924 (printed
ante) which referred to the diaries of all four of the Wrangel party.
We seized upon this as a valuable admission that there were in
existence documents never heretofore acknowledged by Mr. Noice.
On Mr. Lomen’s inquiring from him again he denied that there were
any diaries of Crawford or Maurer but said that there had been
a sort of diary of Milton Galle’s. Later he wrote to Mr. J. I.
Knight saying the same thing in substance and adding that he had
handed over Galle’s diary to Mr. Taylor in Toronto who must have
it. I then wrote Mr. Taylor, asking him to make a further search
of the boxes left with him by Mr. Noice—supposed by Taylor to
contain only odds and ends having value merely as keepsakes—
articles found on Wrangel Island. In response to this letter a
search was made and there was found a tin box about 3" x 4¹/₂" x 1",
half full of separate leaflets of paper cut to the size of the box.
These were covered with fragmentary notes in part very difficult
to decipher. The writing was faded but that was not the greatest
difficulty. There were single words and phrases rather than sen-
tences, and abbreviations which obscured the meaning. The refer-

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