stefansson-wrangel-09-32-058r

FRAGMENTARY PAPERS OF MILTON GALLE 319

and being awake at night, which is a common arctic summer custom
and logical during the perpetual daylight, is still being kept up when
that logic is gone. Sample entries are the following: September
12th, “We got to bed about 6 A. M., thick fog then. Stayed [in
camp] rest of the time. Shortly before midnight fog lifted and
could see the mountains.” September 14th, “To bed about 1:30 A.
M., Maurer at 3:30 . . . Lit lantern about 6 [P. M.] to-day
on account of darkness.” September 15th, “I copied diary into
loose-leaf with Corona, sat up till 1 P. M. I got up at 9 P. M.,
others up also.” September 16th, “I go to bed at 4:30 P. M.,
others have been in bed since 7 A. M. All get up at 6 P. M.”
September 18th, “I go to bed 8:30 A. M., up at 12:30 . . . all
stay in to-day.” September 21st, “Bed 4 A. M., up shortly after
noon.”

Galle seems to have been more interested than Knight in the
cooking and in the rationing of the food. Consequently we get more
information about that from his scattered notes than we do
from Knight’s fuller diary. This does not mean that Galle was
any more particular about what he ate or more given to com-
plaining. The only complaint is in the entry for August 24th.
It is to be inferred that up to that time the main drink of the
party had been tea. On that date Galle says, “Coffee has taken
place of tea; I don’t like it.” This cannot have been because the
tea had really given out, for Knight mentions the use of it by him-
self and Crawford the following January. Perhaps they saw an
approaching shortage and wanted to save it for traveling, using
the coffee when at home in camp.

It seems that from the arrival of the party on the island until
August 14th of the second summer the cooking of meat had been
uniformly in the Eskimo style—boiling. Even without records we
would infer that this was so, for Knight and Maurer had been thor-
oughly converted to boiled meat on their previous journeys. Most
people who live mainly or exclusively on meat in the Arctic come
to the same conclusion, as has been shown by the experience of
dozens of men on our various expeditions. But in August, as
recorded also by Knight, Galle had been engaged in trying out
the fat of polar bears and putting it in cans. On the 14th he
thought he would fry some bear steaks. Evidently the party
had tried this before, for Galle says that these steaks tasted a great