stefansson-wrangel-09-32-056v

316 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

ences first deciphered seemed to be largely to the weather and
therefore not of great importance.

I received the notes shortly before leaving New York for Aus-
tralia with a letter from Mr. Taylor's office explaining how the box
came to be overlooked. I put it aside with the thought that the
leisure of a sea voyage might enable us to decipher the abbrevia-
tions and possibly to get out of them more than at first seemed likely.

On careful study it appeared that the notes were aids to memory
which Milton Galle had jotted down as a basis for his more com-
plete diary. The abbreviations may have been used partly because
of his hurry in setting them down; or possibly the motive may have
been in part a desire for privacy. He did not want the meaning
of some of the entries to be obvious to anyone who might glance
at them. When deciphered the notes give unneeded confirmation
of many things that are really sufficiently clear from Knight's
diary, but fragmentary as they are they also fill in a good many
gaps which Knight left blank in the record. Especially welcome is
their confirmation of certain parts of the verbal story of Ada
Blackjack. These needed confirmation because her truthfulness
had been challenged both in Mr. Noice's printed statements and in
his letters to the parents of Lorne Knight.

Since the connected story has already been written on the basis
of the papers in our possession, we shall not attempt to make up
a coherent narrative from Milton Galle's notes but shall merely
take up the most important items which he mentions that have
not been mentioned by the others, and the most important con-
firmations of both Lorne Knight's diary and of Ada Blackjack's
statement which she dictated to Mr Jordan and which is reprinted
elsewhere in this appendix. We shall also mention certain confirma-
tions of verbal statements made by Ada Blackjack to others than
Mr. Jordan, statements which are not on record except in personal
letters written to me by those with whom she talked in Seattle and
Los Angeles.

Since Mr. Harold Noice has alleged that Ada Blackjack was
probably responsible for the death of Lorne Knight because of
grudges she had harbored against him for more than a year, it is
of importance to note that there is in Galle's record no indication of
any friction with the Eskimo woman during the time covered.
This, of course, agrees with Knight's own diary. Galle mentions