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5 1 - ✓ 5 2 - ? CHAPTER V The Planning of the Expedition

The sailing of our expedition for Wrangell Island in September, 1921, was due to the strong conviction that the world is at the dawn of a revolution in transportation ideas similar to that initiated heard of? heralded by Copernicus and Columbus. When the nations of Europe discovered four hundred years ago that the earth was round, they found it necessary to modify not only their intellectual concepts but also their diplomacy, their foreign policy and their commercial endeavors. It appeared to us that a similar, if less conspicuous, change would come when the nations realized that the earth is round from north to south from the point of view of the transportation engineer as well as from that of the astronomer and geodecist sp?. Nations that had been far from each other as measured from east to west were about to become neighbours across the northern sea.

On a Mercator's map the Arctic looks like an area of vast extent, and seems to be located between continents on the south and nothingness on the north. But on a map which has the equator for circumference and the North Pole for center, the Arctic looks like a small hub from which the land masses radiate like the spokes of a great wheel. It may be said that on a spherical world any point is central if we choose to consider it so. Mathematically that is right, but from the human point of view it That is specious reasoning, because for we inhabit the land and not the sea. It is possible to determine the center of distribution of the land masses. While this does not coincide with the Arctic, it does fall so near the Arctic that the validity of our figure remains undisturbed. The polar sea does hold a position analogous to that of the hub as related to the rest of a wheel.

[Umiak] illustration There must have been a time, before navigation began, when from the practical point of view the Mediterranean was a barrier between the peoples of Africa and Europe. But navigation developed through slow centuries. We cannot say in which

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century it first became easier to carry a hundred-weight across a hundred miles of sea than to transport it over an equivalent stretch of land. That time did come earlier than the with the Phoenicians, earlier even than the Minoans if not earlier; and since then we have thought of the Mediterranean as connecting the continents even more than it divides them.

The difficulties of crossing the Arctic may seem formidable to-day, but the crossing of the Mediterranean must have appeared even for more formidable to the earliest experimental navigators who paddled fearfully along its shores, * / Insert footnote attached dreading the very breezes which centuries later were destined to become the best friends of more skilful navigators. It has been It took the Europeans and Africans a long time since the Phoenicians to conquered the Mediterranean; but those who say that the Arctic will "forever" remain unconquered should remember that forever is a longer time than all of recorded history. We are Some practical and well-informed people are already beginning to say that the crossing of the Arctic by airplane and airship is a certainty of the next few years. Those who know the polar ocean in the sense in which a sailor knows the Atlantic think equally well of the submarine, and it may not be many years between the first crossing of the Arctic through the air above the ice and the first crossing through the water below the ice. Whenever the Arctic shall become as crossable to us as the Mediterranean was to the Phoenicians, it will become more of a connecting link between the continents than a barrier. The fact of its central location with regard to the lands will then be of paramount importance. The roads between various suburbs tend to run through the center of a city, and so will the roads between the lands have a tendency to meet and cross in or near the Arctic because it is near the center of the land masses. This tendency will become constantly more marked with our growing mastery of the air and with the northward crowding spread of civilization into in Alaska, Canada and Siberia.

While the Wrangell Island expedition was based upon the north and south roundness of the earth from the transportation point of view, upon the smallness of the Arctic, its crossability by airship and airplane, and its central

* Insert footnote following page

Footnote

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* Illi robur et aes triplex Circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci Commisit pelago ratem Primus . . . . . . . . . . . says Horace, undoubtedly with the Mediterranean in mind. The In English this would be, roughly: "That man had a heart of oak and three-fold brass, who first entrusted his frail bark to the stormy deep."

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location with regard to the land masses, there were also subsidiary considerations based upon my historical study of the northward trend of civilization through historic time and upon my personal observation as to the mildness of arctic climate when compared with ancient beliefs, the abundance of arctic vegetation as compared with its generally postulated absence, and the richness of the land and sea in lifeless and living wealth.

The polar ocean, so far as we know it, is studded with islands. There is also an area of about a million square miles not as yet explored and this may or may not contain other islands. These islands, both discovered and undiscovered, have an intrinsic value dependent on their vegetable and animal life and upon their resources in minerals. The seas between will also confer value on the lands, for they will have productive fisheries. But beyond their intrinsic value the islands have positional value to the transportation engineer. Some of them are small but others are far larger than Great Britain. On the headlands of the smaller and on the wide, grassy plains of the larger islands will stand supply stations for airships, providing not only what routine equipment the air navigator may need if he gets there, but also the airships and airplanes that will respond like our present coast guard vessels to S.O.S. signals from distant aircraft in distress.

On the basis of these considerations I began in 1919 to urge upon the Canadian Government the importance of continuous and extensive exploratory work in the Arctic. Hitherto the northern islands have been considered worthless and have, therefore, remained the undisputed property of whatever nation cared to claim them either through discovery or contiguity. Now these islands were about to receive a value that would gradually develop until some decades hence a few of them at least (and we could not tell in advance which) would be coveted much as certain tropical islands now are by great nations that quarrel about them.

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During the last three hundred years the British have done as much northern exploration as all other European nations combined. Accordingly they had already the moral claim of discovery and exploration to most of the islands north of America and to some islands north of Asia. I argued it was important for Canada to continue the exploration of these islands and to do whatever was necessary to make it clear to the world that they valued them and intended to keep them permanently. It was also important to explore the areas thus far never traversed, both to accumulate information and to acquire discovery rights to any islands that might be found. I thought that five years probably, and ten years inevitably, would see the clear dawn of a normal popular understanding of the Arctic. Then would begin a possibly jealous competition among nations as to which could discover and claim the new islands and as to which had the right to hold permanently territories islands that had been so long neglected by their discoverers that they had become no-man's land, open for occupation by whatever country might prove sufficiently enterprising.

There were many in Canada who had views similar to mine, and several who were sufficiently interested to urge them upon the Government. Between us we spent an aggregate of weeks talking to Cabinet ministers and politicians, we wrote reams of semi-confidential letters of argument, we begged and implored. Then came the minor good fortune that one of the European nations through diplomatic channels cast some doubt upon the validity of Canadian claims to a certain "Canadian" arctic islands. This kindled interest, for it is human nature to want whatever someone else wants. The Government actually began to spend money, and the plans of an expedition on a great scale took shape.

Then arose a most unfortunate controversy as to who should be the controlling personality in these expeditions. Had there been a clear victory for one or the other of the two chief candidates, all/might have been well. But the worst possible happened. An approximately equal support for each developed

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in the Canadian Government; a virtual deadlock was produced. Eventually the supporters of one candidate seem to have proposed to the supporters of the other that, since they could not agree on what to do, they had better agree to do nothing. A telegram announcing this decision reached me in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1921 and broke my heart for the time being.

We have dwelt in previous chapters upon the theoretical considerations behind our belief in a coming new era and our plans for extensive and continuous northern exploration. But I had also been under constant pressure of another sort. The tropical explorer becomes infatuated with the tropics and either returns to them or eats out his heart deploring the circumstances that keep him away. It is so with The like is true of the arctic traveler. There are few who once go north who do not go also without desiring to return there a second and a third time. or at least whine and complain eat out their heart with vain desire because they cannot go. On my expedition of 1913-18 I had had with me a number of men who had fallen in love with the North and who were pining to get back. there. I had told them about the indefinite plans of the Canadian Government, promising that if these materialized I would try to get them an opportunity to go along. My files are filled with correspondence begging for such chances. Two of my men, Knight and Maurer, had been specially urgent and I had promised them the first opportunities.

E.Lorne Knight was had been a Seattle high school boy who had served capably when he began in 1915 his for capable three year service on my last expedition. He was fitted for pioneer work both by physique and temperament and was had been popular with his companions. I liked him especially. In 1917 he accompanied me on the longest sledge trip I ever made, and in 1918, when I was ill with fever, typhoid, he accompanied my second-in-command, Storker Storkerson, on one of the most remarkable of polar adventures. On that journey Storkerson and his four companions traveled in midwinter by sledge north from Alaska about two hundred miles into the unexplored ocean, selected a substantial ice floe and camped upon it for more than six months while it drifted four hundred and fifty

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* See the appendix, post, for an abbreviation of Storkerson's own story of this remarkable adventure.

miles, living by hunting the while and trying especially to determine the direction of ice movement in that part of the ocean.* During the seventh month Storkerson, the leader, became ill. It was October, the worst part of the year for travel over moving sea ice, and they were then three more than two hundred miles away from land. But because they were complete masters of the technique of winter travel over moving sea ice floes, they got ashore without trouble. The thrilling story of the seven-month drift and the five hundred miles of sledge travel over broken see ice in going forward and back between the composite floe and Alaska is told in the appendix written by Storkerson for my "The Friendly Arctic." With the [note in margin]: How about Nansen exception of Storkerson and myself, there was no man living in 1921 not even Nansen who had travelled as many miles [afect] over on over moving sea ice or who had spent as many days upon it away from a ship as had Knight. Of the great explorers of the past, Peary was the only one who had excelled Knight's record.At twenty-eight he was in age, experience, physical strength and tempermental adaptability an ideal man for the work he so passonately desired to undertake.

Frederick Maurer I saw first in 1912 when he was on a whaling ship wintering in the Arctic north of Canada; in 1913 he became a member of the crew of our Karluk. He was with that ship when it sank some eighty miles north east of Wrangell Island and was one of the men who spent more than six months on Wrangell Island in 1914 after the shipwrecked men landed there. It was he (as we have told in a previous article chapter) who raised the flag at the time British rights to the island ware reaffirmed on July first 1st, 1914. Maurer was eager to get back to any part of the Arctic but particularly eager to get back to Wrangell Island, for his knowledge of various other parts of the North led him to consider that as one of the richest and most desirable islands. Like Knight he was at the ideal age of twenty-eight and qualified by experience, temperament, and physical strength.

[note in margin]: Not justified by quotation Shortly before I received the telegram from Ottawa saying that the projected expedition had been postponed for at least a year, I had received another wistful letter from Knight in which he said pathetically wistfully: "I have been away from the Arctic nearly two years now, and it has been quite a long two years.”

We have told in a previous chapter that In 1921 it was reported in the press that the Japanese were

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believed to be penetrating eastern Siberia with a view to wresting it permanently from the Soviet government of Russia. Some friends of mine who had returned from northeastern Siberia confirmed the actual Japanese penetration at the time and believed in its permanencye. With my great admiration for the Japanese, I took it for certain that within a year or two they would realize the coming importance of Wrangell Island and would occupy it. Since they were at that time the allies of Great Britain, it would have been all the more awkward for us to ask them to leave the island. The most Britain could have done would have been to suggest international arbitration, whereupon it might have been decided that, in spite of original British discovery, an actual Japanese occupation in 1921 or 1922 had more force than a half year of British occupation in 1914.

By a curious accident an old friend, Mr. Alfred J. T. Taylor, of Vancouver, turned up in Reno the day I received the heartbreaking telegram from Ottawa. I was worrying over what appeared to me the shortsightedness of our statesmen and worrying also because it seemed I was going to be unable after all to provide Knight and Maurer with a chance to go north. The appearance of Taylor cheered me, and in an hour my wrecked hopes had been replaced by a plan we thought we could carry through.

Since Wrangell Island was already British, we could keep it British by merely occupying it. As we understood international law, it would make no difference whether such an occupation had been specially ordered by any government so long as the government in question eventually confirmed it. I wired Knight and Maurer to ask whether they would go to Wrangell Island secretly and whether they would exchange their American for Canadian citizenship in order to make the occupation legally effective. Both replied eagerly in the affirmative. Since I was just then engaged under contract on a piece of work that did not allow me a day’s vacation until September, I got Taylor to undertake the actual organization of the expedition. Since Because the Canadian Government had decided to do

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nothing for a year, we could not take even them into our confidence. We confided in no one except that Taylor had to place the facts before his private attorney to get an opinion of the legal aspects of the case. The attorney told us that an application for Canadian citizenship by Knight and Maurer would not turn them forthwith British in the sense needed to make an expedition British which was led by one of them. He advised the organization of a limited liability company under the laws of Canada. This company would employ all the men who were on the expedition, and that would make the enterprise indubitably British. Later he revised this opinion, coming to the conclusion that we could not feel the undertaking safely British unless a British subject were at the head of it. in command. This led to the employment of Allan R. Crawford, the son of Professor J. T. Crawford of Toronto, Canada, to be in formal command. We had previously corresponded about his possibly going north and I now telegraphed him to join me on the Pacific Coast.

Because of later tragic developments, it is important to explain here how Allan Crawford came to be selected for the Wrangell Island expedition. During the winter 1920-21 several of us had been carrying on an energetic campaign in Ottawa to interest the Government in the beforementioned large plans of polar exploration. One of the most enthusiastic was Mr. J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of Dominion Parks and at that time officially interested in the welfare of northern Canada since the game laws, which now have since been transferred to the Northwest Territories Branch, were then under his administration. Spring drew on apace and we were eager that the expedition should sail that summer. We were, therefore, trying to get everything ready so that the moment we received approval and money from the Government we could push ahead along various lines. Our most definite success had been that money had been We were temporarily optimistic through having succeeded in getting money set aside for the refitting of the Canadian Government's old exploratory ship, the Arctic, and this work was actually going on in secret to the extent that the purpose of the

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refitting and the destination of the proposed voyage were kept hidden secret. So far so good, but it was almost equally important that we should have a staff of men ready, Mr. Harkin and I, therefore, agreed on writing a tentative stereotyped letter to the presidents of most of the Canadian universities, asking them to nominate young men trained in the sciences and recently graduated from college with whom we might confer to make up our minds whether they might be eligible for polar service.

Eventually we received replies from most of the presidents; but the only correspondence that concerns us here is that with the University of Toronto. We need not copy the whole correspondence, for its essential points are summarized in the first letter written to me by Allan Crawford.

[note in margin]: smaller type

"168 Walmer Road, Toronto, Apr. 11th 1921.

Mr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Harvard Club, New York City,

Dear Sir:

Your letter to Sir Robert Falconer, President of Toronto University asking him to nominate an assistant on your next expedition, has been referred to me by Dr. W. A. Parks, Prof, of Palaeontology. I understand that my name is being sent to you so I thought it might be wise to furnish some further particulars.

I am twenty years old (1/2/01), weigh 151 lbs. and am 5'10" high. I have never had any eye trouble and I believe my vision is above average. My circulation and heart action is OK and I have a good stomach. I have never had any serious contagious disease.

I was under age to go overseas but I was in the Officers’ Training Corps in Canada. I was employed by the Geological Survey of Canada last summer in Algoma and so have had some practical experience in Pre-Cambrian geology. In this matter I might refer you to Mr. Ellis Thomson, Dept. of Mineralogy at Toronto University or Dr. W. A. Collins, Director of the Survey.

I am writing my third year exams. at Toronto. My college work for the last two years has been chiefly geology, palaeontology, chemistry and mineralogy. I have had a good grounding in science and mathematics having taken the First Edward Blake Scholarship in Science at the Honour Matriculation examination at Toronto University in 1918.

Although I have not written for my degree I find in my course I am up against men much older and more experienced than myself. I feel I

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could acquit myself much more creditably if I had the opportunity such as you offer. My father. Prof. J. T. Crawford, is quite in accord with my ideas. If you are disposed to consider me, we might arrange an interview either in New York or wherever would be convenient to you.

Yours very sincerely, (Signed) Allan R. Crawford.

My correspondence with the various applicants from the different universities gradually led me to the opinion that Allan Crawford was the most promising. He was eager for a decision and so was I, but we could not get definite action from the Government. Once we thought we had it, for we received the following letter from the Prime Minister:

[note in margin]: Smaller Prime Minister's Office Canada

Ottawa, Ontario, February the 19th, 1921.

Dear Mr. Stefansson:

I have discussed the matters which you laid before me to-day and desire to advise you that this Government purposes to assert the right of Canada to Wrangel Island, based upon the discoveries and explorations of your expedition.

I believe this is all that is necessary for your purposes now.

Faithfully yours, (Signed) Arthur Meighen.

This letter made Mr. Harkin and the rest of us happy for a day. But a day was all, for we received notice that, while the Government had not decided against the action we recommended about exactly reversed their decision to hold Wrangell Island, they had placed the matter again under discussion, asking us to do nothing further until we heard from them a second time again. We never did hear favorably except as already indicated when the Government informed us in general terms that, while the proposed expeditions would not be authorized in 1921, they were likely to be authorized in 1922.

But the future was dark with uncertainties of a new sort. Mr.

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Meighen seemed converted to our point of view and the like was true of several members of his government Cabinet, but an election was looming and it was by no means certain that Mr. Meighen’s government would be in the saddle when the promised "next year" arrived. returned.

I had been anxious for a personal conference with Allan Crawford but I was working in the western United States at a job that occupied me seven days in the week, and the expense of fetching him so far west was considerable. But an opportunity came when the University of Michigan offered me an honorary doctorate and refused to confer it with without my actually appearing in Ann Arbor on Commencement Day. It was my first doctor's degree and I was correspondingly eager to get it. I put all the pressure I could upon my employer, who eventually permitted me an eight-day leave. Other reasons for my keen desire to go to Ann Arbor were that I could then without much expense arrange a talk conference with Allan Crawford and that I could at the same time get a good opportunity to talk take with the British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Auckland Geddes, who was also coming to the university Michigan to receive a doctorate.

As soon as the leave had been definitely arranged, I wrote Crawford as follows:

"Elko, Nevada, June 11, 1921.

Dear Mr. Crawford:

I am not sure I can offer you this year anything attractive in the way of northern exploration, but can you meet me at Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 30 - arriving there June 29 to be ready?. I am unfortunately tied on a western lecture tour by a contract but am getting leave to come east for that one day to get an LL.D. degree from Michigan.

It will be but a brief conversation. But on the chance of its coming to something I shall pay your expenses if you will risk the time. Please reply by night letter collect.

(Signed) V. Stefansson."

In a few days I received the following telegraphic reply:

"Windermere, Ont, Jun. 18, 1921. "Will be Ann Arbor June 29 and 30

(Signed) Allan Crawford."

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Later I received his manuscript reply:

"Muskoka Assembly, Lake Rosseau, Muskoka, Ontario. June 19,1921.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Jerome, Idaho.

Dear Mr. Stefansson:

I am in receipt of your letter of June 11th and wired you at Ashton, Idaho, yesterday. I will be at Ann Arbor on June 29th and 30th as you advise. This letter is just to let you know in case the telegram did not reach you to-day at Ashton.

Sincerely, (Signed) Allan R. Crawford

At Ann Arbor my conversation with Sir Auckland Geddes was satisfactory. As an official he was diplomatically careful. But I inferred a good deal of personal enthusiasm from his insisting that we should discuss Wrangell Island under its original and rightful name of Kellett’s Land. He assured me also that the temper of the British people is such that they would be in general in hearty sympathy with us if they understood our views and proposed actions. I was then discussion with then asked him whether he thought the British Government might back us in case the Canadians did not. On this he did not commit himself at all. I also discussed the possibility, then only vaguely in my mind, that I might organize a private expedition in case the both governments failed to act the summer 1921. In that relation Sir Auckland promised only friendly co-operation in getting me introduced to the Premier and Cabinet of Great Britain in case I sent out an expedition in the summer of 1921 and wanted to go to England that autumn to present my case and get support for continued work in 1922.

My talk with Allan Crawford was even more satisfactory. During a day of intermittent contact I talked spent with him in the aggregate several hours and formed the high opinion which was intensified later when he joined me on the

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Pacific Coast and which has been constantly increased as I have learned the details of his work on Wrangell Island. He had an avid curiosity and an eager interest in every sort of thing, including politics. He was strongly of the opinion that Mr. Meighen's chances for re-election were not very good and that, much as we might regret it, we would have to think along the lines of what might happen if another government came to power. When towards evening I finally decided to tell him fully in confidence all the Wrangell Island plans, it was after he had promised me that he would keep them confidential secret even from his parents, a promise I have since learned he scrupulously kept. The conclusion was that he was eager for the work and would take all chances, including that of my possible failure inability to pay him wages in case the Government failed to back us up. I would make these promises of wages and keep them if and when I could. The only thing essential was that I would find without his help the money for this year's outfitting, although he would have liked to contribute had he had any money. As related hereafter, he was actually better than his word on this point and really did contribute a little money towards the expedition.

But the conclusion of the Ann Arbor conference could only be that Crawford must return to Ontario and await developments. I would let him know by telegram if the Government authority came through and he would be ready at a few hours' notice. Whatever the scale of the expedition, two of his comrades would be Lorne Knight and Fred Maurer, who were both on the Pacific Coast, and the first thing would be for him to get together with them so as to have a few days or weeks of preliminary association to decide whether they were personally compatible congenial.

It was an especially good fortune that there came to meet me at Ann Arbor not only Crawford but also Captain George H. Wilkins, D.S.O., of the Australian Army, who had been second in command of the northern section of my expedition of 1913-1918.* This gave Crawford some opportunity to converse with ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * See many references to George H. Wilkins in the index of "The Friendly Arctic."

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a man who had served three years in the Arctic under my command, who knew my ideas and methods of exploration, and who could give a novice such sidelights as he as could not have be secured get from me.

On July first Crawford went east and I west with nothing settled, but the final decision of the Government came within the limit of the time I had given him. As said above, the Government had decided to postpone action for a year. It was then Taylor and I resolved but/I decided at Reno, Nevada, that we would act on our own, instead, trusting to convert the Government to our support (even if it were a new Government) before the year was over. The next step was a telegram to Crawford and he was soon on his way to join me on the chautauqua circuit. Up to that time Lorne Knight had been assisting me with the lectures, managing the stereopticon and doing whatever else might be necessary. I had no real use for two assistants but I wanted to give Knight and Crawford unlimited time together, so I got Knight transferred to the position of assistant gate keeper while Crawford took his place as my assistant immediate helper.

Of the many curious rumors that have gathered around the Wrangell Island expedition is the one that Crawford, Knight and Maurer had been converted to my views by the reading of my evangelistic northern books, "The Friendly Arctic" and "The Northward Course of Empire." Neither of those books had then been published and the "Northward" book had not even been conceived as an outline in my mind. I did have with me a few chapters of manuscript, for "The Friendly Arctic" was then being set up in type in the Eastern States, and I frequently discussed talked with Knight and Maurer about the correctness of narratives and opinions in that book which touched directly their association with the work described. I discussed with Knight, for instance, the section about his illness with scurvy and I talked over with Maurer Captain Hadley's narrative of the seven months spent by him, Maurer and the fifteen others on Wrangell Island. Both Knight and Maurer had heard me lecture frequently, narrating experiences of in which they had themselves been part. shared. It is, of course, conceivable that they might have been convince of some new thing by hearing my presentation, but it is far more likely that they

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would have discovered my errors of fact or argument had I been wrong, losing confidence rather than gaining it from hearing anything which I said that was not strictly in accordance with the facts as they knew them or with the views which they themselves had deduced from those facts. Knight was of an active temperament but Maurer was more contemplative and his mind at least contained many theories as well as the experiences from which they had been deduced. We all talked these over now and then and we were seldom found themselves ourselves in disagreement.

While Knight and Crawford were constantly together as we traveled from town to town, it was only occasionally that they saw Maurer, who was lecturing on another chautauqua of the same ownership as ours that "covered" smaller towns nearby than ours. Crawford made many attempts to get me to talk to him at length about conditions as I found them and the methods in which I believed. But I avoided this in general, urging him that it was more important he should know the views of the men with whom he was going to be associated in the field. If he was in doubt about these or thought they were in conflict with something he had heard me say, he and Knight were to discuss such discrepancies them with me. That They did so happened perhaps two or three times and we soon arrived at an understanding. In fact, so far as I remember, the differences turned out to be apparent only.

It took us several weeks to get all details arranged. Most of that time Crawford spent with me, and part of the time Knight and Maurer were with us also. There never were happier boys than the two veterans. They were so exuberantly happy that it was difficult to realize that they were twenty-eight and not eighteen. Knight told by the hour stories from his three adventurous arctic years. What Maurer contributed was equally enthusiastic and even more to the point, for he had actually been on Wrangell Island for six months and was in a position to tell the rest of us about the climate, the vegetation and the abundance of sea and land game. Crawford was soon infected with their enthusiasm. The contagion spread also to Milton Galle, a Texas boy of twenty, who had been

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for some time acting as my secretary. On the recommendation of the other three and at his own request, I decided to make him the fourth member of the party. The later story of the expedition shows that he turned out loyal and capable, as good a comrade as anyone ever had whether in lean times or in days of plenty.

Crawford was to be in command because the central idea was that the enterprise must be British. But the relation of Crawford and Knight was to be somewhat that of the ship's captain to a pilot when the ship is entering a harbor and when, on the theory that the pilot knows best, the captain for the time being suspends his authority. This was not as good an arrangement from the viewpoint of efficiency and safety as if we could have put either Knight or Maurer in command. Still, the personality of Crawford seemed to be such as to make the plan tenable. The events of the next two years showed that in this made no mistake. Through his character and ability Crawford proved a real commander even while following out the ideas of his more experienced companions. In a diary kept by Knight for two years there does not appear a single criticism of Crawford or any comment to the effect that anything was done that did not thoroughly meet the approval of both Knight and Maurer. A search through the manuscript records of famous expeditions would show that such uniformly friendly co-operation through two years of isolation is almost unique in polar history.

How enthusiastically and quietly the preparations were made is well brought out by a letter which Knight wrote me on June 18, 1921, from his home in McMinnville, Oregon, where he says: "I never wanted to do anything in my life as bad as I want to get away from here . . . . There has been a great deal of speculation at our house on where I am going, but they are still in the dark. Dad is excited stiff." This/shows that Knight ,as well as all the others, was keeping their particular destination secret even from his parents.

Another letter from Knight says: "of course you must realize that I am very anxious to go north under your direction and am waiting eagerly . . . . Last night Maurer lectured in Amity and I brought him home in a car. We were

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A part of the preparations for the expedition was that Fred Maurer wanted to get married. The Chautauqua on which he had been a lecturer had closed and he had then joined me for a few dayws on my circuit, the regular itinerary of which was approaching Missoula, Montana. If he wanted to he married, Missoula was the place, for I had there several old friends, among them two university classmates. I had just learned that Charles Clapp had been elected to the presidency of the University of Montana and I knew that Mr. and Mrs. Clapp would be glad to have the wedding at their home. A telegram was accordingly sent and Miss Delphine Jones of Niles, Ohio, took the next train for Missoula, a two days’ journey. away. They were married on August 11th Their bridal journey trip was another thousand miles west to Seattle where Mrs. Maurer remained for a few days while the outfitting of the party was being completed. When they sailed for Nome she took the train alone back to Ohio.

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together all day and he continually talked about the North. I think (if possible) he wants to get back up there as bad as I do. No doubt he has told you all this. . . . He continually talks Wrangell Island."

Insert here page attached In order to camouflage our real plans, we hinted had been hinting at commercial development when it was necessary to talk for publication at all. On July 2nd Knight wrote again from McMinnville: "All the papers on the Coast have printed articles concerning your commercial enterprise. The Portland Telegram perpetrated an awful poor pun when they said, 'Stefansson’s northern enterprise should cut some ice.' I hope I have a chance to show them what kind of ice we will cut."

→ On August 16th the party were assembling in Seattle and Knight wrote me: "Maurer arrived this A.M., all grins. He seems to be happy. We all are, for that matter, and aching to get started."

The four boys party made the nine-day voyage from Seattle, Washington, to Nome, Alaska, by passenger steamer. On September 4th, Knight wrote from Nome: "We are having a nice, easy time at your expense; but I would rather be far out on the 'bounding sea' bound for the place that we are bound for."

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From the beginning of our plans about a northern expedition independent of the Canadian Government, the understanding had been that the men who went north would do the work and that I would not only find the money for the initial voyage but also undertake to convert to our plans whatever Government might be elected in Canada. But by the time the four men had been together for a week, their enthusiasm had mounted so that they wanted to be sharers in the financial side as well as in the work. Knight had no money and did not know where he could borrow, so he arranged to co-operate financially by having part of his wages due from the company paid monthly into an account for the purchase of $1,000. worth of shares. shares In this way he eventually became the owner of Fred Maurer had some money which he put in and he also borrowed $1,000. from his brother, John Maurer, of New Philadelphia, Ohio, purchasing ten shares.

Before sailing north Crawford arranged for the purchase of $500. worth of shares. After he reached Nome he mailed our company back a check for $100. to purchase a two-year option on shares for $1,000. I think all the boys took pains to make it clear to their relatives that they were doing this at their own desire. An example of how thoughtful they were in this matter I take from a carbon which Crawford kept in the expedition records, duplicating a letter he wrote to his mother on August 18th, 1921, three hours before he sailed for Alaska the Victoria sailed from Seattle for. "On very careful consideration I have done something which may seem unwise to you but as I am situated it seems like a very fine thing. I am taking five shares of stock in this company. The payment is $50. a month for ten months. This I did without any suggestion on the part of Stefansson (he is the company) or anyone else."

All communications regarding this manuscript should be addressed to

CHRISTY & MOORE LTD., Literary Agents. THE OUTER TEMPLE, LONDON, W.C.2.

Telegrams: Lecturing, London. Telephone: CITY 7659.

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Chapter VI. How the The Outfitting and the Voyage to Wrangell

At Nome the party gave the finishing touches to their simple outfit; all decisions were based upon the extensive Arctic experience of Knight and Maurer. They never reported to me exactly what they were taking and I never worried about the omission, for my views were the same as theirs. What these were can best he made clear by repeating a story which Knight used to tell when trying to explain the Arctic to people who had never been north. I have told the story myself in print but never so fully as I shall now, for the lesson of it has never been so pertinent.

In the late winter of 1917 Knight found himself one of a party of four who were traveling with two dog teams at about 80.5° North Latitude and 110° West Longitude. There were two other white men in the party, Harold Hoice and myself, and an Eskimo boy of about twenty, Emiu or Split-the-Wind. For both Knight and Noice it was towards the end of the second year of their Arctic experience. Although Emiu was an Eskimo, he had really no more experience than they, for he had been brought up in the city of Nome and had hunted only rabbits and ptarmigan somewhat as a farm boy might hunt rabbits and grouse farther south. I was in command and It was my ninth winter of polar travel. Both officially and by experience I was in command and our general course was planned by me. Apart from that general consideration, our progress and success depended about equally upon each one of us four.

According to the devious course one would have to travel by reason of the configuration of lands and seas, we were when the trouble came upon us about seven hundred miles from our

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own nearest ship and about the same distance from the nearest other human beings, the Eskimos of Victoria Island. We were on the open ocean, a hundred and forty miles from the last land we had seen, Meighen Island, and more than a hundred miles northwest of the nearest land, Ellef Ringnes. The ice we were traveling over was in sluggish motion, the direction depending upon the winds which not only drove it before them but also broke it into fragments, some the size of a piano, some as big as a farm and the largest perhaps fifteen or twenty miles across. Most of this ice had been formed the previous year and was heavy; but some was only a few days old, thin and treacherous. There were also long lanes of open water between the floes, yards or miles in width and vast, manycornered areas here and there. Although Some of the floes were a hundred feet thick and they averaged only a little heavier than a good deal heavier than the polar ice as a whole. say four or five feet. The average thickness of winter ice in the Beaufort Sea would be about four or five feet.

The ice was exceptionally heavy, but we did not realize that so much through its appearance as through the comparative scarcity of seals and the entire absence of polar bears. It was one of the poorest game districts I had ever traversed, and the poorest ever seen by my companions. But they were cheerful, for they relied upon our uniform experience that on the polar sea the areas devoid of game, while possible anywhere, are never of very large extent. One can always find game by merely traveling doggedly ahead in any constant direction. Vacillating and zigzagging might confine you within such an area but a straight course would will certainly take you out.

But in this case consistent constant progress became impossible, for two of our party of four were became seriously ill. Both Knight and Noice had been complaining of lassitude, pain in their

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joints, discomfort and gloom. This Their gradually developing pessimism was especially disturbing to me, for both were normally of smooth and optimistic temper. That the Eskimo boy was also becoming pessimistic did not worry me, for he was of the mental type which takes its color readily from others. Through two years I had found him contented when others were contented and depressed when they were depressed.

Gloom is an early symptom of scurvey and so we began to suspect that disease. In any case, there was something so seriously wrong that we had it seemed wiser to turn back. The illness alone would not have led us to that decision, nor would the scarcity of game without the illness. But the combination of the two stopped us, although we had been pressing forward eagerly on one of the most important journeys of our five-year expedition. We had already penetrated far into the undiscovered ocean. To the pure scientist it is of equal importance to find land or to find the absence of land in an area being explored. One fact is as significant as the other for a larger knowledge of the earth. But there are few so purely scientific that fame is meaningless. The point of view of the crowd is that the discovery of land is success but the discovery of the absence of land failure. They forget that the explorer can not alter what he finds and should not be held responsible for anything but a true report of the nature of his discovery. It seemed to all of us that we had the approval of the crowd almost within our grasp for the signs of land not far ahead were becoming more numerous every day. We saw ourselves as its discoverers and my companions were reluctant to turn back. But the decision was mine and I believed our lives were in danger. So we turned

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and began the struggle back towards land Ringnes Island.

I have frequently heard Knight tell the story of the turning back and the vicissitudes of the journey. towards land. He always emphasized how sorry he was that I decided to retreat go back, saying he thought arguing that we could have continued safely and that we might have made as successful a cure of his disease on the new land we would have discovered ahead as on the already known land to which we did return. That was the optimism of the real explorer. In that respect, among others he was better fitted to command than I whose orders turned us back.

The return to land across a hundred and twenty-five miles of chaotic ice was both difficult and in reality dangerous. Frequently we had to make long detours to get around open water and to find a place where the floe we were on touched the next floe to the southeast of us so that we could step across. The illness of the two men was steadily developing, but and we were afraid to pause although for we needed fresh meat for the cure. We might have secured it a hundred miles from land, by camping and hunting as we had often done before. But game signs were few, and I felt that under the particular conditions, we had better not risk a delay at sea, but press on towards rely either on the scale of the shore lead for a better prospect of seals. or the caribou of the land. If the shore lead were closed were closed when we got to it we would search for caribou on the land just beyond.

It became clearer every day that the disease was scurvy. I had held for many years the theory that scurvy could be cured by fresh meat and we had more or less proved it already on the expedition. According to that theory, Emiu and I were in no danger from the disease, for we had been eating fresh meat all winter. The other two had been living away from us on groceries or else on fresh meat, the antiscorbutic value of which had been destroyed by over-cooking. Had we found a large patch of level ice with indications of seals, or open water with seals swimming in it, we should have camped to hunt and attempt attempt the cure. with seal meat.

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But we already knew the area to be bad for sealing hunting since we had already crossed it that spring, outward bound. Our casual glances at the various patches of open water as we passed had given us glimpses of one, two or three seals in a week - enough perhaps to cause us to stop and hunt had we feared worse conditions elsewhere, hut not enough to delay us when we felt reasonably sure of better chances conditions ahead.

According to our general policy of living by hunting, we had started northwest from Meighen Island some three weeks before with only a little food in our sledges, and this was now almost gone. For the second time on that five-year expedition we went on rations - about half as much food as we needed. The dogs also were put on half rations, their food consisting in large part of wornout skin clothing. Even this eventually gave out and before we reached land we had begun to feed them some new skin clothes that we had been saving for next summer - waterproof sealskin boots, etc.

As we struggled slowly towards shore the invalids became weaker day hy day. The last two or three days before landing Noice was unable to walk and had to he hauled on the sled. Knight could not walk by himslef but was able to stumble along holding on to the back end of the sled for support. With grit such as few possess, he even possess occasionally used the failing remnants of his great strength to help the sleds over bad places. The journey was A hard enough experience for the Eskimo and me, but harder for the sick men, because of their physical suffering and because of the gloom, approaching melancholia, which is a symptom of their disease. But to hear Knight tell it afterwards he must have worried less than I, and that could mean only that he had a firmer confidence than I in the theory on which we were working - that game would be found and that fresh meat would cure the scurvy. ¶ Handicapped as we were by

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the rough ice, the sick men and the weakening doga, it took us sixteen days to get ashore. When we landed we had half rations for the men for six days and a half rations for the dogs (consisting mainly of new skin clothing) for six days also. We were still five hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human beings, so that our lives could be saved only by there could be no safety except through success in hunting.

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We landed at noon. The ice along the shore We did not stop when we finally got to the shore lead for it was temporarily closed by a west wind. The three mile belt of ice between it and the beach was smooth and the tired men and dogs were able to struggle ahead about six miles following made fairly easy progress along the coast to the southeast while I walked made a long curve inland searching looking for game. I remember it as a discouraging experience, for in twelve or fifteen miles of walking I did not see a sign of a living thing nor even a blade of grass. In my whole arctic experience I have never been so near discouragement as I was that night when I came into the camp where the sick men were lying. I have no recollection of just what I said and I made no diary entry, but Noice has recorded that my comment was, "Well, boys, we seem to have found at last one of those barren arctic islands that we have heard read so much about !"

After a night of gloom and a breakfast of forced cheerfulness, The next day the sick men and Emiu again proceeded along the coast while I hunted inland. After walking About five miles from camp I discovered I found some old caribou tracks, and a little later others not so old. Then I discovered came upon the fresh trail of about twenty caribou.

It was now only a question of patience, for nine years of living in the Arctic by hunting had naturally put me in possession of the necessary technique for getting caribou. Hunting is much like any other skilled occupation; the things that seem difficult to the apprentice and impossible to the outsider are matters of routine to the adept. There are good hunters in every part of the world; but arctic hunters are few and the conditions peculiar, so that it may be worth while to tell just how you go about it when securing any particular animal is a matter of life and death. In a good game country we often proceed carelessly, thinking that if we don't secure get this band, we shall soon find another. But the previous day had convinced me that Isachsen Land Ellef Ringnes Island is by no means a paradise for game. Our plight and the fewness of caribou made it imperative that I should get the animals that had made this trail. Luckily it was the season of perpetual daylight so that I had on my side the most important element of a successful hunt - unlimited time.

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When there is wind, caribou ordinarily travel facing it. Had there been a wind I could, therefore, have taken the trail with a certainty of overtaking the animals catching up within a few hours, for they never travel fast unless scared by wolves. But this was a day of calm with airs fluctuating from one direction to another. A change of wind would bring my scent to the caribou; the silence would enable them to hear me walking at half a mile, for the weather was still cold and it is one of the [note in margin]: [point] it was summer! characteristics of the arctic winter that on a still day you can hear any given sound from five to ten times as far as you can in the warm summer. After a glance at the trail which assured me that the band numbered between fifteen and twenty-five, I turned in the direction opposite to the one they had been traveling and walked rapidly a mile or more to the top of a high hill. From the hilltop I examined the ground carefully in every direction with my field glasses, hoping to see the band in question and thinking it possible that another might be somewhere else. But nothing was to be seen except the white lowlands and the gray hills where the grass was not completely covered by the snow - for we were now in a country very different from that of yesterday. Then it was barren gravel and now it was grassy prairie.

Without actually remembering it, I would judge from the general method of arctic hunting that I spent perhaps an hour on the top of that hill waiting for the possible emergence from cover of animals that were grazing. I next walked a mile or two at right angles to the course the caribou had been taking and from the top of another hill re-examined the country with my glasses. There was nothing to be seen. Since this viewpoint gave me a conspicuously different angle from the previous one, I considered it likely that I had seen all the near country to the south and that the caribou were not less than three two or four three miles away. I accordingly walked with confidence a mile or two in the direction of the caribou and then climbed a hill cautiously from the north, making sure that I should not expose myself suddenly against the skyline to watchful

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eyes beyond. But there was no beast to see or be seen, and so I proceeded to another hill that lay at right angles to the trail. After this sort of zigzagging for several hours, I eventually came in view of the caribou which had then just moved to the top of a hill, whereupon the next thing was to wait for an hour or so unti.l in their slow grazing they had moved beyond the skyline.

The wind was now A light but fairly steady wind had now sprung up although faint, and I could begin to rely on the direction in which it would carry my scent. But it was not strong enough as yet to carry away the noise of my walking in the sometimes crusted snow. My estimate now was that with the slight breeze the caribou could hear me something between a quarter and half a mile on level ground. When there was a hill between them and me they could not hear me quite so far. I accordingly went directly but slowly and cautiously towards the ridge over which they had disappeared. When I got to the top of it I found they were half a mile away on some level land ground. For the time being a closer approach was impossible.

During this whole time there had been a slight haze, more trying to the eyes than The most brilliant sunshine on the whitest arctic snow. any other arctic weather. It was imperative that my eyes should be in perfect condition when I began shooting. For that reason and also to pass the time away I lay down flat, face downward on my arms, and went to sleep. The temperature was probably well below zero. Accordingly, the chill woke me in less than half an hour even in spite of my excellent fur clothing. It is one of the common arctic superstitions that you must not go to sleep out of doors for fear of freezing to death before you wake up, the cold being supposed to have a soporific effect. The opposite is true, as anyone can discover find out for himself by trying to sleep in winter with insufficient bed covering.

On awakening from the first nap I found the caribou still on unapproachable flat land. Accordingly, I crawled back well into the concealment shelter of my ridge, walked around there for a few minutes till I was warm again, then crept back to the skyline, took a good look at my caribou and went to sleep again. By

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alternating short naps with walks to get my blood in circulation I whiled passed away an hour or two or three hours. The caribou now commenced moving again and finally passed beyond another ridge. By that time the wind had freshened enough so that it deadened I no longer worried about the sound of my walking. All I now had to guard against was being seen.

When next I came in sight of the caribou they were still too far from cover for successful shooting. At five hundred yards I could easily have killed two or three of them, but we I needed the whole band. I was preparing for another long wait when all of a sudden the clear outlines of the animals became hazy and I realized that a light fog was coming up. Only the future could tell whether this would be for good or evil. The fog gradually thickened until the caribou were swallowed up in it. Knowing that my eyesight was a little better than theirs, I now crawled ahead until I saw the outline of the nearest first one through the mist. Evidently this was a straggler well behind the others and a wait was again necessary. The caribou were slowly grazing away from me, as I could tell by the gradual disappearance into the fog of their single accidental rear guard. As this animal faded I crawled ahead, and when it became more distinct I stopped. After about half an hour of this intermittent slow pursuit the fog rolled away and the entire band were clear before me, some of them at the foot of the slope down which I was crawling and others on the level beyond. The nearest were perhaps a hundred yards away and the most remote about three hundred and fifty. I was in their clear sight now, but that only meant I must keep still, or else move only with such stealth as makes imperceptible the progress hides the movement of the hands of a clock. No wild animal is intelligent enough to be frightened by a thing which does not seem to move.

During all this time I had been worrying about the success of the hunt with relation to what my companions might do. I was afraid that from the seacoast where they were traveling they might have seen the caribou outlined against

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the sky on top of one of the hills. My general rule was well understood, that two men must never go after the same band of caribou, and I knew that under ordinary circumstances the boys would obey. But this was no ordinary situation case. They were worried and ill and their lives and mine were at stake. The problem would present itself to them as to whether it might not be possible that I had failed to see these caribou and that I had by now proceeded in my hunt perhaps ten or fifteen miles beyond them. Had that been the case so the thing to do would have been to let Emiu try. He was not a very good hunter, having had little experience. I think up to this time he had killed only half a dozen or a dozen caribou in his life - all of them on our expedition. I feared that the decision might have been made that he should try the hunt. Even when working with a concerted plan, two hunters, in my opinion, are not so good as one; when working without plan either may easily spoil the other's chances. When the fog lifted my mind was at length freed from this worry, for the caribou were in a position where they could not be approached except from my direction and a hunter coming up behind me would be bound to see me as soon as he saw the caribou. That would be his warning to keep hands off.

As I wanted the whole band, I now used a method of shooting designed to that end. When described it may seem cruel but it is in reality the least cruel of all methods, for by it every animal fired at will be dead within a few minutes, while an indiscriminate blazing away, not uncommon among hunters, whether native or white, will allow wounded animals to escape to a torture that will end days later either by death from the wounds directly or from wolves that will get a crippled wounded animal more easily than those that are unhurt.

A caribou shot through the brain will drop so instantaneously that it frightens the herd. One shot through the heart will usually sprint at top speed anything up to a hundred yards, and that frightens the band still more.

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Neither of these shots is, therefore, possible if you want to secure an entire band. I accordingly waited until an animal near the middle of the herd, but not very close to the other caribou, presented its side to me. I then took careful aim so that the bullet should pass through the body just back of the last rib. An animal thus wounded will stagger at the blow but will not run. It evidently has no idea of what has happened but feels a pain or discomfort which induces it in a few minutes to lie down in a manner identical with the quite quiet lying down of a well-fed ruminant that is going to rest and chew the cud. Caribou are like sheep about imitating each other. If one runs they all run, and if one lies down they are very likely all to lie down. The noise of the rifle does not startle the arctic caribou, for it resembles the cracking of lake ice, which sound is frequently repeated any day the temperature is rapidly dropping. Such changes of temperature happen often enough so that caribou in winter seem to be in constant and placid expectation of loud and sharp noises. When the wounded animal lies lay down, the others will accordingly glanced at it and then went go on feeding. In this case I took my time and As an additional precaution shot two others similarly, upon which not only they lay down two or three but several unwounded animals lay down as well.

Being gregarious, animals, caribou at a distance from the main band will run towards the center of the band if frightened. I made use of this principle in killing the next animal which was the one farthest from me. I waited till it faced this animal was faced slightly towards the herd and then put a bullet near the heart. It ran at top speed for forty or fifty yards towards the herd and then fell so suddenly that it turned a somersault. This startled the herd and the animals that had lain down of their own accord jumped up, but they were reassured by seeing the wounded still lying apparently placidly at ease.rest. I now followed by shooting these animals at the outer edge of the herd band both towards the right and the left. When each fell the animals ones nearest would run away from it towards the center of the herd. It was perhaps around the fifth or sixth shot that a stampede

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was threatened, for one animal started off determinedly at right angles. I don't think they would have run far because of the quieting effect of the wounded that were lying down, but in this case I was able to kill the leader and that stampeded back those that were immediately following.

At this stage the herd did not give the impression so much of being frightened as of being dazed or puzzled. A thing that startled me had no effect on them - shots began to be fired behind me and the bullets whistled over my head. I knew in a moment, of course, that it was Emiu and was thankful that he had not interfered sooner. He must have been two or three hundred yards behind me and it is not likely that more than half of his bullets took effect. Whether they did or not was a matter of no consequence, for the animals were all within easy reach of my rifle and the stage of their wanting to run away had long passed. When I had shot all the others I killed also the three originally shot through the abdomen, which were still lying quietly with their heads up, much like cows, resting at ease in a pasture.

I have told this story from my own point of view and have given details to show the reader what sort of hunting methods it was we had used for year after year of self support on the expedition of which Knight had been a member. Uniform success under what often seemed the greatest handicaps had developed quite naturally the firm confidence which Knight so often expressed. and in which he so frequently expressed his confidence thereafter. I have even heard him say, and Noice has said the same thing, that sick and five hundred and fifty miles from the nearest neighbor they never worried about a possible failure of the hunt. The disease of scurvy does not impair the appetite and Knight used to say that while he kept wondering how long it would be till he got the next square meal and that while he was also getting pretty tired of being sick, the idea of death from starvation never bothered him. When they story has been told either by Knight or Noice I have frequently heard the criticism, made by their audience that they did not tell it in such a way as to bring out the element of suspense - our distance from the nearest human beings, the illness which crippled our party and

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the uncertainty of getting game in time. I have always sympathized with these critics, for both my memory and diary tell that I was a bit frightened. at the time. I have had the feeling that in the subsequent rapid and exhilarating recovery when they got plenty of underdone meat to eat both sick men must have lost the memory of their previous gloom and worry.

It took only three days until the acute symptoms of scurvy had disappeared. There had been the blackest gloom in their minds and pain in their every joint, but both, vanished disappeared after three days of underdone and raw meat. Their traveling strength came back more slowly and it was several nearly weeks until we were on the road again. It was Only after we got back to “civilization" that did I realized that this experience had planted in the minds of my companions a faith in the safety of northern travel even greater less qualified than my own.

A year after the events experiences just related, that part of our expedition of which Knight was a member was wintering on the north coast of Alaska. I had gone [made a] three hundred-miles by sledge journey to the Mackenzie River trading posts and to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police establishments at Macpherson and Herschel Island to buy dogs, and on the journey this I had contracted typhoid fever. It had been my plan to take a small party about two hundred miles northward from the north coast of Alaska in March (1918), camp on a substantial floe and drift with it for a year, living by hunting. According to our views the floe should have drifted in twelve or thirteen months to a place somewhere north of Wrangell Island or perhaps north of the new Siberian Islands. It had been the tentative plan that our party would abandon this floe either at the end of one year or two, years and travel south, landing either on Wrangell Island or on the coast of Siberia. We had relied so often on the game supply of the open ocean that it did not seem to us particularly dangerous to undertake this previously untried adventure. I have never in my whole experience been so eager to do anything. But the typhoid made it impossible, for I was flat on my back for more than four months. In this emergency the journey was undertaken by my second-in-command, Storker T. Storkerson. Knight was one of

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three volunteers to go with him. The others were A. G. Gumaer and Martin Kilian.

The plan was carried out. * The party went north from Cross Island, Alaska, to a point about two hundred miles from the seacoast and about a hundred miles farther north than any traveler had penetrated in that region. They made their camp on a floe about eight miles wide and fifteen or more miles long, and drifted with it some four-hundred and fifty miles during six months, living, as they had planned by hunting seals and bears. Toward the end of this period Storkerson became ill of a disease (asthma) which had no relation to the hardships or other experiences of the journey, and because of this the illness the party started south in the worst traveling month of the year, October, when they were nearly five hundred miles north of the arctic circle, more than two hundred miles away from land and when the daylight had become very short.

March and April, with intense cold and perpetual light, are the best months on the mobile sea ice. In summer there is real water between the broken floes which can be easily negotiated in our sled-boats, and there is still continuous light. But in October daylight grows scarce rapidly and there are nearly continuous snowstorms and fogs. The thin ice lies treacherous under a blanket of snow that gives the same appearance to stretches that would support an elephant and to others that would engulf a child at play. The only safety lies in jabbing your ice spear through the snow ahead continually to discover if the ice is firm or mushy. Storkerson's official report of this journey adventure which would have been (but for the skill and judgment of the men who made it) the most difficult and dangerous ever attempted in the Arctic, contains a sentence that deserves to become a classic. In it he sums up thus a journey over shifting and treacherous ice in darkness, fog and storm: "We started from a point a little over 200 miles from shore on October 9th and reached land November 8th without accident or hardship." It is a little hard to realize that, apart from Storkerson's mental attitude toward them and his skill in meeting them, this journey possessed had every terror of darkness and ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- * See Appendix A for Storkerson's own account of this remarkable journey.

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ice and gale storm that has taxed alike the strength, courage and descriptive powers of the explorers of the past. There was no affectation in Storkerson's simple summary of the journey. He annotated the statement later by saying: "We took every ordinary precaution and no extraordinary circumstance came up." He might have said the same thing less modestly by quoting Napoleon: ”I make circumstances".

The preceding long digressions are intended to show the manner in which had been formed Knight's ideas of a proper outfit for living one or several years on an uninhabited arctic island. were, therefore, They were based in general upon three years of polar service and in particular upon the two sledge journeys in which he had shared. The first of these journeys was the longest I ever made and in some respects the most difficult and dangerous. It had led us over unexplored seas covered with shifting ice and over lands practically unknown lands, although they had been discovered either by ourselves or others on previous journeys, or by others. The second of Knight's journeys, that with Storkerson just described, can be fairly considered one of the most remarkable in the entire history of polar exploration, for it was then for the first time that men voluntarily camped on a drifting floating ice floe with supplies intended only to them see take them through the early stages of an their adventure where tragedy was inevitable if the hunting failed. From the point of view of the difficulty of the undertaking, a man of such experience was bound to look forward to a winter or two on Wrangell Island with more or less contempt. After what Maurer had told him about Wrangell, Knight must have considered it an arctic a paradise compared with other arctic lands. Many Some of his previous experiences journeys had been in islands two to five hundred miles farther north than Wrangell and, if northerliness be a handicap, then he had certainly seen a good deal worse. These Canadian islands of his past experience had been devoid of driftwood for fuel. On some we had used twigs and resinous grasses and on one (Lougheed Island) we had failed to find anything with which to make a fire. But the beaches of Wrangell, by Maurer's account, were piled with driftwood and with

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long, straight logs suitable for the building of cabins to be heated with open fires or stoves.

Moreover, Knight had already traveled through a region where for two successive years we had never seen the track of a polar bear, but Maurer told of the bears on Wrangell going by tows twos and threes and half dozens, the beach trampled down with their tracks. Against the scarcity of birds and nests where Knight had been in Meighen and the Ringnes Islands, there were seabird rookeries at Wrangell and tens of thousands of geese and other birds flying in clouds. He had been ill more than five hundred miles from the nearest human beings with less than half rations for a week on hand, and it seemed to him in looking back that he had not worried even then. Now when he looked forward to probable good health on Wrangell Island, less than a hundred miles away from the hospitable American and Russian traders and the wealthy and equally hospitable natives of northern Siberia, it seemed to him that a shipload of goods would be almost a superfluity and that he could land with a sledge and a team of dogs on Wrangell an outfit that would keep him safer and more comfortable than he had been used to being on his former expedition. Indeed, it had been his plan and Storkerson's on their trip in 1918 to land on Wrangell if they had drifted that far west. Their outfit then would have been two sledges empty except for cooking gear, ammunition, old clothes and a few scientific instruments. With such an outfit they had planned to land on Wrangell in May, spend the summer there and proceed to Siberia the following January. To men of the experience of Storkerson and Knight, this would seem easier and safer than several journeys in which they had already taken part.

With Maurer's experience of Wrangell Island and the theories he and Knight held in common, it was logical for Crawford to do what we had agreed he should do and to buy an outfit both in Seattle and

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Nome based on the idea that there were a few necessities in the way of hunting equipment and beyond that everything was in a sense a luxury. Whether they bought chewing gum, a phonotgraph or a bag of sugar, they were in their own minds deciding only for one luxury as against another. Each luxury they took depended on their taste, their slender finances, and upon the transportation problem, for they were going to engage a schooner rated only as carrying ten tons.* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *They originally planned to charter the schooner Orion, but they eventually took the much larger Silver Wave. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The outfit taken by the Wrangell party seemed adequate to them but grotesquely inadequate to the "sourdoughs" and tradesmen of Nome. Before determining the final form of the party, and indeed while as yet I expected the Canadian

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Government to finance the undertaking, I had taken up with my old friend, Jafet Lindeberg of Nome the question of getting Alaskan trappers and prospectors to establish a colony on Wrangell Island. Lindeberg made out some rough specifications as to what the outfit must necessarily be. It began with several thousand feet of lumber and included sheet iron, tar paper, and the like. There would have to be canned fruits and vegetables of all sorts, and beans and syrup, etc. When I showed the list to Knight and Maurer they laughed over it and said that the only way they could understand purchasing such an outfit in Nome and freighting it to Wrangell Island would be if they were spending other people's money and wanted to do a little grafting either for themselves or for their friends who were merchants and the owners of the freighting ships. Knight said that if he embarked on such an undertaking his idea would be to buy the goods with my money in Nome and stop in Siberia to sell them again so as not to have the bother of carrying them to Wrangell.

When Lindeberg was making out the specifications for the possible Wrangell Island colony he was not thinking of what he himself would have liked to take with him [expect], for he had tried the simple life in the early Alaska days and preferred it to the more expensive and tedious outfitting of later years. But he was setting down what he knew the present-day Alaskans would consider necessary for safety and comfort. Accordingly, when the Silver Wave was being loaded by our men at Nome it was lumber and tar paper, canned fruit and bacon that the Alaskans expected to see going aboard. And When they saw that the outfit was wholly different and the quantity very small, there was at once a beginning of the criticism as to supplies and method which kept growing constantly after the ship sailed.

Alaska is only just beginning to develop soberly out of her original state as a gold country where one man in a hundred made his fortune by some spectacular accident and the other ninety-nine spent year after year in dreaming that their turn was about to come. One who does not know the typical

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gold miner might think that gold and its probable discovery would be the one subject for reliable judgment; but the reverse is the case. The prospector who is hardheaded and practical on every other subject will swallow the fishiest yarn where gold is concerned. There is only one way in which you can make it difficult for yourself to spread a rumor about the discovery of gold and that is by talking loudly and freely. Assume secrecy or even the slightest reticence as to where you have been or where you are about to go and rumors of gold "strikes" will grow day by day and spread until some night half a dozen parties set out, each trying to do so without the knowledge of the others and each following some clue to which no any rational person would pay any no attention. to.

The Wrangell Island party had been markedly reticent on the passenger steamer from Seattle, and in consequence the rumor of some sort of gold discovery had already germinated among their fellow passengers before they got to Nome. The outfit they were buying seemed curious and, from the Alaska point of view, certainly inadequate for a party going to any uninhabited region. This gave the theorisers two "facts" to work on. Gold had been discovered, and it must be in the vicinity of some trading post where the party could buy the supplies which they were not taking with them. Few gold miners have been on the north coast of Alaska, but there is current the general knowledge that the arctic coast has a string of fur trading posts. Obviously these were being relied upon by Crawford's party. Possibly some of these remote fur traders might even be in in secret league with us. Accordingly, it became pretty definitely known that their destination was "somewhere east of Point Barrow."

The owner of the schooner Silver Wave was Captain Jack Hamar. When Crawford went to him with a proposal to charter his boat for a voyage to an unnamed destination the skipper quite properly refused to negotiate unless he were let into the secret. Had our party understood better the gold miner's psychology they might perhaps have said that they were going "somewhere east of

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Point Barrow.” But beyond reticence they knew no wiles and so they told the truth. Hamar was to know privately that they were going to Wrangell Island but he must not tell anyone. But that is exactly the formula which according to miner logic is to be interpreted as meaning the opposite of what it says, and when the story spread from Captain Hamar it seems to have been agreed that one destination might now be eliminated. Wherever our party they were going, they were not going to Wrangell Island. Still, the wording of the agreement was that the ship was chartered bargain was made for that voyage. I do not think the boys guessed really suspected Captain Hamar's skepticism about Wrangell and or the theories he held about their plans until on the actual voyage when he began to show more and more surprise that he was not asked to change his course, his instructions remaining that Wrangell was the destination. The party got the distinct impression that it had been the Captain's shrewd design to demand a higher fee for the voyage whenever Crawford came to him and owned up that the destination was really "somewhere east of Point Barrow."

In our discussions before the party left Seattle it had been agreed that, while most of what they spent the money for at Nome was optional, there were two things imperative - hunting appliances gear and Eskimo families. Under the hunting head would come arms and ammunition, fish nets, fish hooks, harpoons and the like. But perhaps most important of all would be an Eskimo skin boat of the type called an umiak. As made in western Alaska an umiak consists of a framework of driftwood or possibly imported lumber, and over it stretched a covering made either of the skins of bearded seals or walrus. Such a boat is very small at twenty-five feet in length and they run up to thirty-five feet or more. A typical boat was one we used on our expedition of 1908-1912. It was thirty-one feet in length. The cover was made of the skins of seven bearded seals. It would carry in smooth water a cargo of between two and three tons and it was so light that two of us could carry it overland at a steady walk.

In the early days of Alaska whaling the whalemen used to use

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exclusively cedar whaleboats made on the Massachusetts coast, and these continued to be employed used in midsummer whaling where there was little danger of striking ice. But at such icy stations as Point Barrow and Point Hope the cedar boat competed only two or three years with the indigenous Eskimo craft and was then discarded forever. The cedar boat is so fragile that if it strikes a piece of ice the size of a bushel basket at six miles an hour it is likely to be stove. At the same speed the umiak can be jammed into an ice cake of any size and will remains uninjured unless there be a rib broken - damage that need not be repaired until the next day. In whaling and walrusing it is frequently necessary to drag a boat over a piece of intervening ice to launch it on the other side. It will take six or eight men to do this for a whaleboat and with the slightest accident it will be stove. Two or three men can drag an a whaling umiak any old way across the roughest ice and dump it again into the water without fear of injury. All these things our men knew quite as well as anyone. But the prices asked for skin boats by the natives at Nome seem to have been higher than they considered equitable and so they decided to stop in at East Cape on their way to Wrangell Island and pick up a skin boat cheaper there.

The support of Eskimos In an undertaking such as that of Wrangell Island, Eskimos are almost as neccesary as boats or weapons. is nearly indispensable. Not that they are wanted for hunting, for almost any white man can soon become as good a hunter as the average Eskimo; neither is their help essential in the building of camps. But their women are needed to sew clothes and keep them in repair. But It is the testimony of many experts who have examined the Eskimos sewing of the Eskimo women that it is unequalled in the world. Those who make The manufacturers of boots for hunters that are sold at our sportsmen’s outfitting stores will make the seam almost any way and then waterproof it by rubbing in grease or some other "preparation." The Eskimo woman alone sews a seam that is in itself waterproof. and A seamstress not used to white men's ways will become angry if she sees the purchaser greasing the seam of a boot that she has made, for she takes it as a charge of incompetence. This super-sewing is needed

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only for skin boats and waterproof sealskin boots. But there is another sewing almost as difficult to acquire and almost as necessary - that of the warm, soft and pliable skin clothes that keep out the winter cold. It is possible to dress in silk, cotton or woolen clothing if one wants to follow such methods as have been used in the Antarctic by Scott and Shackleton. But no one will do that if he has the chance of Eskimo clothing, for it is apparently not possible to be thoroughly comfortable at all in the antarctic clothing and the suits actually used have weighed about double.* The best sort of Eskimo suit, complete with outer and ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * For a description of the troubles of polar explorers who did not use Eskimo clothes, or who did not understand how clothes can be kept dry in winter, see Nansen, "Farthest North," Vol. II. pp. 142, 145-6, and Shackleton, "Heart of the Antarctic" Vol. I, p. 340. A summary of the difficulties of explorers with their winter clothing and of the modern methods for avoiding them is also found in "The Friendly Arctic-" see index of this book. __________________________________________________________ inner garments from top to toe, will weigh about ten pounds where a corresponding antarctic outfit of wool, silk and Burberry goes to twenty or more pounds.

It is impractical under ordinary circumstances to take Eskimos on expeditions otherwise than in entire families. Almost any Eskimo man might be willing to engage himself for a year’s job in a mining camp or on a whaling ship, relying, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, upon European or American clothes. But for a residence in an island like Wrangell it would be almost impossible to engage an Eskimo man unless he knew that there would be women/along to do suitable sewing.

With these ideas clearly in mind the Wrangell party tried to engage at Nome some Eskimo settlement families, and did so actually. But when the time came to sail there arrived at the boat landing only the Eskimo woman Ada Blackjack, who had been expecting to go along as

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a member of one of the families engaged. When she found that the others had broken their bargain she also wanted to withdraw but was prevailed upon to go by the assurance that the Silver Wave would call in at some Eskimo settlement between Nome and Wrangell to hire families in which Ada could then take her place. The boys party made a last effort to get the people previously hired to stick to their bargain or to engage others, but no

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one could be found who was willing to go. The season was already at least a month later than the best sailing time and they were afraid to delay. They appeared also to have felt certain thought also that they would be able to engage some families of Siberian Eskimos at East Cape when they went in there to buy the skin boat. With that program they sailed September 9th, 1921.

The voyage from Nome to East Cape would resembled a voyage in a schooner like the Silver Wave similar boat from Scotland to Norway. There was no ice in sight, and none was expected. The weather also proved favorable.

At East Cape the party met their first misfortune and made the most serious error of the whole expedition. The misfortune was that no Eskimos could be engaged. The error of judgment was that when the natives demanded about double the usual price for an umiak the party decided that they ought to refuse to be robbed and that they could get along all right if Captain Hamar would sell them instead the ship's dory.

Much has been made of this incident since by nearly every critic of the expedition, and far too much it seems to me. It is true that a departure was being made from the plan which the members of the expedition and I had formulated together and in which they believed as thoroughly as I. But if properly understood the interpretation is not straight out one of bad judgment, but rather of excessive confidence in the resources of the Arctic. Knight knew how to hunt walrus; everyone does, for they are among the easiest animals in the world to hunt. But Knight had lived by hunting for several years in a region where walrus are entirely absent and where having a boat makes no difference on the score of walrus. He had often depended on hunting when no boat was available, or at least when for months at a time a boat even if it could have been constructed in case of necessity was never constructed because the necessity did not arise. To a man of such experience the skin boat would seem an almost superfluous precaution. He knew its value but he thought that it could be safely dispensed with. They could

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get seals without it, they could get polar bears without it, and they might even/get walrus without it since they could have a dory. So they told the natives they did not care to be overcharged, purchased the ship’s dory from Captain Hamar and sailed on towards Wrangell Island.

Had I known that there was no skin boat on Wrangell Island I should have worried more than/I did over the safety of the party there during the next two years. But my only information was a sentence which I here quote from Crawford’s letter to me dated at Wrangell Island September 15th, 1921; "Left Nome September 9th. Called East Cape, Siberia, TO PURCHASE SKIN BOAT to purchase skin boat. Sighted (Wrangell) island noon yesterday." This I took to indicate that our plans in respect to the umiak had been carried out.

Captain Hamar and his crew knew, of course, that a dory had been substituted for the umiak, but they seem/to have considered that there was no particular reason for transmitting that information to me, and they never did.

A careful reading of all the Wrangell documents/shows that the absence of the skin boat, while serious, had no immediate bearing on the final tragedy, for it was only an error in the early newspaper reports to say which gave the impression that the last fatal journey had been undertaken because of scarcity of food, and, therefore, indirectly because of the lack of a skin boat.

At the date time when the Silver Wave/sailed, it would not have been surprising to meet ice between Siberia and Wrangell Island. One year in every eight or ten it is even/difficult to get to the Island at all. But in this case no ice was sighted. On the 14th of September the heights of Wrangell could be seen at an estimated distance of thirty or forty miles. That night they were hidden by fog but/next morning they came to view again and by afternoon a landing had been made at a point which was they did

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not then recognized for certain but which proved to be near the middle of the south coast, a little east of Doubtful Harbor.

For September 14th, 15th and 16th Knight wrote that the team of seven fine Nome dogs

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were "in rather poor shape but will do my best to get them in good condition when we reach the island. The season is getting late and a good many things must be done before the freezeup, so we are anxious to get started with our work.”

On September 15th Knight wrote, notes that, "We sighted (today) a high sandspit with a great deal of wood on it and landed our outfit in a heavy surf. Everything was landed by 10:30 P.M. Started unloading at 7:00 P.M." September 16th: "After unloading we slept on the ship but the wind arose from the south and we were called at 3 A.M. We had time to get our personal stuff ashore and the Silver Wave departed with three whistles and a great deal of flag dipping, and left us to our own resources. We have a good outfit and the fox tracks look promising, so we should have a successful winter. The surprising thing to me is the weather, nice gentle winds with an uncommon amount of sunshine for this time of year, and not an ice cake in sight." We see an occasional seal some distance out but if they were killed it is doubtful if we could get them . . . I had a shot a a large walrus but missed."

Chapter VII The Difficulties of 1922.

When the Silver Wave sailed away "with much flag dipping," a silence fell upon Wrangell Island that remained unbroken for two years. she carried Captain Hamar brought out with him only the briefest letters either to me or to friends and families. It had been to each of the four an exciting adventure since they left Seattle and especially so between Nome and Wrangell. Apart from personal greetings my only report from them was a letter from Crawford which I quote in full:

"Sept. 15th, 1921, 5:30 P.M. Off Wrangell Island.

"Dear Mr. Stefansson:

"Commencing this letter 1/2 mi. offshore. Left Nome Sept. 9th. Called East Cape, Siberia, to purchase skin boat. Sighted island noon yesterday. Resembles in outline & color country round Lewiston, Idaho. Large flat spaces near coast but seems to be mostly hilly. Snow on highest of hills looks like this year's. Have as yet seen not a single ice cake.

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6:00 P.M.

"Stopped - don’t think this is Rodger’s Harbour. Maurer is uncertain. Started unloading. Have been very quiet about our business here, since it appears the Russians think they own the island and their Siberian Patrol is liable to pay us an unwelcome visit. Finished unloading 11 P.M., came aboard for meal and wrote till midnight. Up again 2:45 breakfast, then ashore and raised flag and issued proclamation of which I enclose two copies. Next year bring a phonograph and records as we had no time to get one. Mr. Anderson has copies of grocery and hardware bill, so you can see what we lack. At present we are one mi. west Rodger’s Harbour. Fox and bear tracks abundant. Also bring Literary Digest, assay outfit and explanatory books - may be placer gold. We have Eskimo woman, Ada Blackjack, with us to sew. Lots of grazing for reindeer. Everyone seems contented. Best of luck on European trip. Call on my people if in Toronto.

(Signed) Allan R. Crawford”

Although this letter was brief, it was satisfactory. In a way its brevity was one of the most satisfactory things about it, for if there had been any feeling of inadequacy of outfit or bad prospects in any respect the letter would have been lengthened to include them.

But although nothing had occurred so far to worry the Wrangell party or me, something had occurred which appears to have greatly worried Captain Hamar and his men. The main purpose of our the expedition was to continue the occupation of Wrangell Island begun in 1914 on behalf of the British Empire against the time when commercial developments (transarctic flying, northern reindeer ranching, etc.) should make it valuable. It is possible that the party did not fully realize that the legal effectiveness of the occupation would depend on the duration and character of the occupation itself rather than upon any assertions or proclamations. But They were exuberant over an accomplished success, for there they were obviously

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ahead of any Japanese or other occupation anyone else that year and obviously the first landing party since our own men had left there in 1914. Apparently the first thing they did after landing was to scramble up a hillside, erect a flagpole, hoist the Union Jack and read ceremonially the following: proclamation a photograph of which is reproduced herewith.

"Proclamation, Know all men by these presents that I, Allan Rudyard Crawford, a native of Canada and a British subject, and those men whose names appear below, members of the Wrangell Island detachment of the Stefansson Arctic Expedition of 1921, on the advice and counsel of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a British subject, have this day, in consideration of lapses of foreign claims and occupancy from March 12, 1914, to September 7,1914, of this island by the survivors of the brigantine Karluk, Captain R. A. Bartlett, commanding, the property of the government of Canada, chartered to operate in the Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913-1918, of which survivors Chief Engineer Munro, a native of Scotland and a British subject, and raised the British flag, declared this land, known as Wrangell Island, to be the just possession of His Majesty King George of Great Britain and Ireland, the dominions beyond the seas, Emperor of India, etc., and a part of the British Empire.

"Signed and deposited in this monument this sixteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-one.

(Signed) Allan Crawford, commander E. Lorne Knight, second-in-command Milton Galle F. L. Maurer

Wrangell Island, Sept. 16, 1921 "God save the King."

When this the proclamation got to me through the mails several weeks later I took it as a rather inconsequential detail of a successful enterprise. But it had started a ferment in Alaska which was to bring far-reaching developments. Until the flag raising of the flag and the issuing of the proclamation, it does

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not seem to have occurred to the crew of the Silver Wave that there were any motives other than fur trapping or gold prospecting. Apparently also they felt that the hoisting of a flag had a magic effect, suddenly changing or establishing sovereignty - the much more important landing of an outfit a few hours earlier appears to have had no such meaning in their eyes. On the voyage back to Alaska they worried a good deal, probably not so much for the fate of Wrangell Island in itself as for their own share in the enterprise, wondering whether their fellow Alaskans Americans might consider them renegades, since they had indubitably if unwittingly taken part in such momentous doings.

I should judge that when the party landed in Nome the more important citizens of that city took the flag story rather calmly, realizing that it the hoisting of the Union Jack did not do much to add or detract from the general effect of all the other things that had been done by my expeditions between 1914 and 1921. But the incident was enough for a journalist with a keen news sense, and the Nome Nugget printed a long "story" under a "scare head." The gist of it was that here had been this valuable island lying right under the nose of Alaskans these many years and now some Britishers had come and run off with it. Apparently no one in Nome had up to that time thought much about the ownership of the island, but now it seemed clear to a good many that it was an obvious and logical part of the territory of Alaska. The legend even grew up that it had been included in the Alaska purchase. Alaskans and other Americans had frequently seen it (this was true, for especially in the whaling days several ships used to sight Wrangell Island practically every year). After the subject had been discussed long enough around Nome the theory developed that it had been deceitful of us and even an international "unfriendly act" to outfit in an American port with the friendly support of Americans when the design was to get hold of an island which either was or ought to have been American property.

As said, the substantial leading people of Alaska probably took

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little more than casual notice of these discussions. However, it appears that the talk they eventually crystallized into some sort of protest which was eventually sent by Alaskans to Washington.

Insert here page following

From After the landing of the party in Wrangell Island and the safe return of the Silver Wave to Nome I saw had seen no cause for doing anything special for some months. There was an election on in Canada and there was no point in trying to urge the Government to action until we knew who would be the Government next summer when the supply ship for Wrangell Island would have to sail. I felt sure of the safety and comfort of the party. My stock reply to constant inquiries was that they were as safe and comfortable as a party equally isolated on a tropical an island like such as Robinson'Crusoe's. They were doing the sort of thing that I had dreamed about doing from childhood, which they had always wanted to do, and which at least one healthy young man in every five in Europe or America would dearly love to have the chance to do.

And if I was not worrying about the situation up there, neither was I worrying about any more southerly aspect of it, when one day a newspaper friend told me that a "big story" about Wrangell Island was about to "break," and gave me the chance of publishing my version before another, probably more inaccurate, should would come from Washington. The New York Times had found out about the protest from Alaska to Washinton to the delegate in Congress and had realized the news value of it but was anxious to have not merely some story but the accurate facts.

Up to this time I had been much pleased with the absence of interest in the Wrangell Island undertaking. Those journalists who knew about it probably imagined that I was anxious for publicity on the subject and were keeping things quiet for that reason, it being the instinct of newspaper men to drag a story out of you if you are reluctant but to be very suspicious of any information you voluntarily give them. I had not given them information voluntarily, but neither had I allowed anybody to discover that I had anything to hide. It was supposed

Insert-p. 91

One of Captain Hamar’s assistants on the Silver Wave was August Soderholm, now master of the schooner Nokatak plying in Alaskan waters for the Lomen Reindeer and Trading Corporation. He had been so much taken with Wrangell/Island that he tried hard on his return to Nome to organize a party to charter a ship and go there to establish a chain of fur trappers around the island. Patriotism may have played a part (to make the occupation of the island jointly American and British) but adventure and the commercial motives were doubtless uppermost. He was unable to muster a party, because the season was so late (the last week of September) that the consensus of sailor opinion at Nome was against the voyage as unsafe because of the nearness of winter. This in spite of Soderholm's strong urging that they had just returned from Wrangell without seeing snow except on the distant interior mountains, and without seeing a cake of/ice at sea.

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that I had an ordinary trading venture "somewhere up North." The news aspect was changed when it became known that I was doing something that for the time being at least I was very reluctant to advertise. It was great luck for me that I had a friend on the New York Times and that in consequence the first big "story" about Wrangell Island that appeared was printed in their issue for March 20,1922, substantially as I had given it out.

With the expedition of two or three ships The Times story about Wrangell Island was such as anyone might condense from a frank and full book telling our ideas, doings and hopes. Although I had been avoiding publicity, I felt after seeing the Times article that no harm had been done and possibly some good. But I felt entirely different after I had seen the "re-writes" of the story by the more sensational papers and especially by the Anglophobe section of the press. These papers used such real facts as suited them from the original story, added such others alleged facts as brought out the meaning they wanted and worded them both in the news form and in the editorial comment so as to raise the question as to whether Americans should tolerate having a British subject resident in the United States organizing expeditions to deprive the United States of an island which belonged to them by the combined logic of history and geographical position. Of course, they begged three questions, first, whether the United States had any adequate legal claim to the island, second, whether the United States wished to press such claim if they had them, and third, whether it might not possibly suit the United States better to have the island in British possession rather than in the possession of Russia or Japan.

But more disturbing than the doings of the Anglophobe American press was the response in the press of Great Britain and Canada. The general trend of the Canadian editorials was to the effect that no one, unless he were crazy, would imagine that so remote an island had any value. This was usually followed by saying that Canada had any amount of undeveloped territory, and that all her energies must be concentrated on developing the lands nearer home before

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any attention was could be paid to remote arctic islands. To a connoisseur in history repeating itself it is delectable to find that these editorials read as if they had come out of the were duplicates in spirit and sometimes almost like literal transcripts of various fragments in the same editorial storm that burst upon Secretary Seward after fifty-four years before where he had purchased Alaska on behalf of the United States - in the days when Alaska went popularly under the names of "Seward's Ice Box" and "Seward's Folly."

In the United Kingdom the editorials were equally condemnatory of our action but on a different basis. In substance they said that, while the value of Wrangell Island was problematic and in the distant future, the value of the friendship of the United States was unquestioned and imperatively needed by the British Empire at this very moment. They pointed out the consequent folly of doing anything that might possibly irritate the United States. By avoiding carefully the question of whether the United States or Great Britain had the greater legal right, these editorials produced an unpleasant impression of servility new for any large section of the Imperial press and in itself a grave sign of the times. The Empire has occasionally been accused of swaggering and taking things without even a show of right. There are certainly many occasions when the Britisn Government has insisted with dignity that international questions of importance should be sifted to their bottom and decided on their merits. You would certainly have to go farther back than Elizabeth for historical instances of the surrender by England of valuable territory, to which the right was clear, on the ground that asserting ones rights might hurt the feelings of some other country.

No one would deny the great importance of Anglo-American amity and certainly the last to do so would be any one of the Wrangell Island party or myself. They were destined never to know what the papers were saying. But I have lived in the United States for forty years and I have yet to learn any characteristic of the American people which would lead me to think that they would consider it a grievance if the British Empire said to them, "If there is a

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question between us as to the ownership of territory, let us discuss it quietly and if necessary submit it to impartial outside arbitration.

Insert pages 94A.B. and C.

The commotion was not confined to the English-speaking press. Editorials began to be published in Russia and news despatches to circulate to the effect that Russia had "always" claimed Wrangell Island, that the claim had always been undisputed, and that the Russians were the original discoverers. Most extraordinary of all was the Russian assertion that the discoverer had been Lieutenant Ferdinand Wrangell who had landed on the island "between the years 1821 and 1824." It is interesting to speculate whether these Soviet documents were based on actual Russian ignorance of the author or merely upon their cynical assumption of complete British and American ignorance not only of the history of British and American exploration but also of the history of Russian exploration and development. I incline to the latter view. Some of the statesmen of the Russian Revolution were qualified to come to a California mining town and teach the star gawkers there the meaning of the word "bluff".

Besides the Wrangell Island venture which looked towards the development of transpolar air commerce, I had on hand in 1921 two major projects with regard to the North. I was anxious to get private individuals to realize as soon as possible the great potentialities of the Canadian Arctic as a pasture land for reindeer. In this I had been already measurably successful, for I had induced the Hudson's Bay Company to transport several hundred reindeer from Norway for an experimental ranch in Baffin Island. Like many another pioneer enterprise, this one had has suffered through accidents not directly connected with the climate but due to the human factor. The herds had had bad luck the first year, good the second, and we are now (summer 1924) waiting with bated breath for the news of the third winter. If it is good, a war has been won; if it is bad, a skirmish has gone against us but other battles and the war itself will be won later. hereafter. Through the nature of the animals and the country the reindeer enterprise must sometime succeed in Arctic Canada.

My second undertaking was to create interest that should eventually

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Some Certain editors and members of the Canadian parliament had been arguing ever since my compaign for further artic exploration had become known argued that Canada's chief claim to the ownership of the islands north of Canada was their contiguity either to the Canadian mainland or to islands that were indisputably Canadian through occupation. Some of these islands north of Canada had been discovered or explored by Norwegians or Americans, who might claim them as against Canada if Canada or Britain were to claim on grounds of discovery, exploration or occupation an island (Wrangell) which was nearer to Russian than to British lands. These arguments, especially when made as speeches in Parliament, were widely circulated. I did not try to meet them in the press, but contented myself with emphasizing to the Government their double fallacy. ¶ The first answer to the contiguity argument was that in most of the territorial disputes between nations that have been arbitrated in modern times, contiguity has been urged as an argument by one of the contending parties but has never been givenweight by the arbitrators. It was, therefore, no more than a pioushope on the part of Canadians that their surrender of discovery and occupation rights in Wrangell Island to Russia would induce other nations to surrender their discovery or exploration rights in certain other islands to Canada, thus establishing a wholly new principle in in ternational law - the revolutionary doctrine that contiguity should rank above discovery, exploration and occupation.

The second answer to the contiguity fallacy is, to a Canadian, more striking than the first. One of the islands Canadians want to hold is Ellesmere. Like Wrangell, it was discovered by British naval officers; like Wrangell it was explored by Americans

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(but also by Norwegians and British); Canada had announced made several times announcements that she wanted of her desire to own it, earlier andoftener than the one Russian as compared with Russia's one announcement (in 1916) that they she wanted to own Wrangell. So far the situations were almost parallel. But the United States Government (the Army) had published a map which I was able to/show to the Minister of the Interior which, by its color scheme, designated as the property of no country not only Ellesmere Island, but the next island south of it, North Devon. And the Danish Government had just no tified the Can adian Government that the Danes did not consider that the Canadian law against the killing of ovibos (musk oxen) applied in Ellesmere Island since it is was not a part of Canada. I pointed out that/if Canada, through Wrangell Island or in any other way , committed herself to the doctrine that the claims of territorial contiguity are superior to those of discovery and occupation, they would lose Ellesmere to Denmark if should the Danes cared to claim it. For Ellesmere Island is only ten miles from that part of Greenland which was made indisputably Danish by the St. Thomas purchase agreement between the United States and Denmark wherein the United States renounced to the Danes discovery claims to Northwest Greenland based on the explorations of Kane, Hayes, Hall, Peary and other Americans.

If we argue that Wrangell belongs to the Russians, who had never even seen it before 1911, just because it is only a hundred miles from Russian territory, then surely Ellesmere would belong to the Danes because it is only ten miles from Danish territory. no Italics{The only way to hold Ellesmere Island was for the Canadian Government to ignore }no Italics THE ARGUMENTS OF THEIR ORATORS AND EDITORS ABOUT CONTIGUITY GIVING the arguments of their orators and editors about contiguity giving ownership, and to plant settlements/on Ellesmere Island quickly, placing themselves standing thereafter squarely on the long undisputed principle of international law that effective occupation (especially when

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strengthened by original discovery) gives ownership. I stated this frequently both in conversation and writing to the Canadian Cabinet, and so did several others of whom I know. Doubtless the Government would have seen the point without our urging. What matters is that they did sea the point and quietly outfitted a ship, the Arctic, to plant Royal Canadian Mounted Police posts on Ellesmere in 1921. That committed the Government of Canada to the position principle principle thatoccupation andnot contiguity should determine the ownership of Ellesmere Island and therefore of all islands. From that moment it became certain that if they ever renounced Wrangell Island it would not be because of its contiguity to it was only a hundred miles from Russian territory.

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lead to the domestication of the ovibos,or musk ox, a project the importance of which is outlined in one of my books, "The Northward Course of Empire." Besides these I had to earn money not only for a living but also for paying into a bank monthly the salaries of the Wrangell Island party of five. These things kept me so busy that I had no time to go to Ottawa for a full discussion of the Wrangell Island situation with the new Liberal Government of the Honorable W. L. Mackenzie King which had replaced the Conservative regime of the Honorable Arthur Meighen with whom I had previously been dealing.

I was also hampered by a naive faith in the inevitable triumph of a good cause. It seemed to me the facts were all on our side with us and that people would eventually take the time to look into them, whereupon everyone they would flock to our side. This occured to me I thought this especially reasonable certain in a country like Canada where within living memory the Prairie Provinces have changed from the supposedly frozen wilderness of fifty years ago to the "bread basket of the world," and where the development of Alaska from "Seward’s Ice Box” to an empire of wealth was about as well known as it is in the United States. But I found that both lessons that lesson seems to have been lost upon the majority of most Canadian editors and that they seldom analogize from the Manitoba or Alaska of yesterday to the Frozen North in which they believe today. There were are also those who seem to realize the coming value of the remote north but who simply do not have the imagination to see their own advantage in developments which probably will not yield profits for twenty or thirty years. These people are logical according to their lights in refusing to do anything for posterity on the ground that posterity has never done anything for them.

For years I had been writing long letters to the Prime Ministers of Canada, to the Secretaries ministers of the Interior and to other influential people setting forth in what appeared to me conclusive terms the background of our northern work. It was another piece of childlike simplicity to feel that all I had to do now would be to refer to this correspondence which the new

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Government would find in the files of their predecessors, and to rely on their reading it and doing something about it. In a way I knew how busy cabinet ministers are, for I have associated with them enough for that; but I somehow expected an exception in this case.

Eventually, when correspondence failed to get results, I did go to Ottawa. There were Before my arrival several types of opposition had been expressed. The speeches/of certain members of Parliament showed that they felt that it would make Canada and the Empire seem/ridiculous to try make any effort to retain on the basis of its supposed value an island well known to be undesirably cold and, in consequence, worthless. Other members seemed to have the feeling that if the Government did/not advance the money for a relief ship I would find some way of securing it privately. This may have been\the chief of the reasons why the Government were so slow to act. Or It may have been only that they were too busy with other things. There probably never was anything to the explanation that has since been advanced - that I had members of the Government so thoroughly converted to the Arctic as a paradise that they fo und my appeal for a relief ship in contradiction with what they believed to be my views. There is, of course, always a danger that the convert may develop a faith more passionate and bigoted than that of the missionary.

In the negotiations with the government, one of the first inquiries\of the Minister of the Interior was what financial return I would expect if the government decided to stand on the its legal rights with regard to Wrangell Island. After making it clear that retaining this originally and still British land within the Empire was more important to me than any money that could be involved, I went on to say that I hoped the government would return without interest, or with bank interest, the money my friends and I had

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put into the enterprise. In this connection we would want/our books carefully audited to make it clear beyond question that we had neither profited nor tried to profit through\doing what we thought foresighted and patriotic. But if the government preferred, either for economy in order to save money or to demonstrate the value of the island, we would take a long lease on it and get our\money back by subletting theisland to some one of the\many arctic commercial companies. I made it very clear that we would much prefer the refund of what we had money actually spent, for receiving a lease would expose us to newspaper allegations that we had been working for money all the time. The very same papers that were now protesting against the retention of Wrangell Island on the ground that because it was worthless would accuse us of fattening at the public expense if we were given got a lease of it.

When pleading with the\Canadian government the spring of 1922 for help (since my money and borrowing power were exhausted) so that a supply ship could be sent to Wrangell, I had made the alternative proposals that they should send/in a ship themselves, give us money to send in a ship, or give us a lease to the island whi chwe could sell or otherwise use to raise money for a ship.

While negotiating withthe Canadian government I had been negotiating also by cable with\Nome and had found available the schooner Teddy Bear, whose captain, Joe Bernard, was an old friend. I had known him and\his ship since 1910

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when the Teddy Bear was the first craft to enter Coronation Gulf from the west since Collinson was there in 18512 (?). The ship was good and the commander ideal. Acting through other old friends the Lomen Brothers of Nome, I made a bargain with Captain Bernard that he would try his best to reach Wrangell Island, receiving a certain sum if he failed but double that amount if he succeeded. The suggestion of doubling the amount had come from me after Bernard had submitted a tentative minimum figure. It seemed to me that the price he first suggested gave too low a wage to one so skillful, and in any case success was worth to us a price immeasurably beyond the reasonable wages of a faithful failure.

One thing I seemed to be unable to make impressive enough at Ottawa was how rapidly the summer was passing and that it was now or never. The friendly attitude of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, the Honourable Charles Stewart, and his deputy, the Honourable W. W. Cory, when coupled with my inability to get action, made me more and more desperate until I finally appealed for money to a personal friend to a personal friend and secured it on the plea on the score of life and death. I said to him in substance that, while we could assume the safety and comfort of everyone on Wrangell Island on the basis of continued good health and absence of any accident, there were dangers of sickness and accident sufficient to warrant my saying that there was a possibility if not a probability that lives might be sacrificed if nothing were done that year. I had not appealed to this friend earlier partly because he was an American citizen and, although I thought him friendly sympathetic to my plans in every way, I did suppose he would have the feeling that there ought to be enough wealth and public spirit in the British Empire to finance so small and altruistic a public British enterprise. This same feeling had prevented me from appealing to any of my other American friends. I have been in British service either partly or wholly during the entire time of my polar service work, but the rest of my forty years I had lived in the United States. Most of my best friends are naturally where I have lived and I could not appeal to them

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on the score of national interest. Those in Great Britain or Canada to whom I could appeal on a patriotic basis were in the main strangers to me personally, completely out of touch with the developments I was advocating and unconvinced of their fundamental soundness.

It may seem that Canadians ought to know more about Canada than any other people. But that is a view not based upon observation. It is a commonplace with travelers that the ignorance about the interior of Africa is nowhere so dense as in the cities along the African coast. If you live in Durban Natal or Cape Town you are tempted to assume that you know Africa because you are an African and you take no interest in meeting travelers who have been in the interior, or in reading books about their journeys. But if you live in Scotland you are vividly conscious of your lack of knowledge and, if you have an inquiring mind at all, you will grasp greedily every opportunity to converse or read about the interior of Africa. The same is true in Canada where the railway trains fly like shuttles back and forth across the transcontinental railways that follow the southern fringe of the country. You pass Most Canadians who travel in Canada merely attach themselves to these shuttles and dart with them through the industrial cities of the East, the grain fields of the prairies, and through the magnificent forests of British Columbia. and you imagine They clim into the trains continental trains expecting to see Canada and they climb out again a few days later, imagining that you they know Canada. It is not uncommon to find even these "traveled" Canadians who referring to such places as Edmonton or Cochrane as being in northern Canada. Our Scotchman who depends upon the map knows better. If you try it out it will be your experience as it has been mine, that if you visit in corresponding clubs in of London and Toronto you will find a far higher average of members with intelligent opinions about the whole of Canada in the English London club than you will in the Canadian.

If we you remember, then, the principle that ignorance of the land beyond the frontier is always densest on the frontier, you will know the fundamental reason why it is in particular difficult to interest Canadians in an arctic enterprise and why it is in general difficult to get the people of any a pioneer country to take an interest in parts of it they have not seen. This explains, at least

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partly, why it was that British and American capitalists were putting money into the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway at a time when nearly half the people of Canada itself were firmly convinced of the folly of the enterprise and passionately opposed to having anybody try it. It is also a partial explanation of why Canadians of to-day will invest money in cattle ranches in the Argentine rather than reindeer ranches in their own country. It is not wholly because cattle are an ancient domestic animal and reindeer new to west Europeans. It is partly rather because their frank ignorance of South America has opened Canadians minds to any information about the Argentine, while their bigoted pseudo- limited knowledge of their own country has prevented them from taking an interest in places not half so far away or half so difficult to reach.

With American money at last available for carrying supplies to a party of British pioneers, I cabled to Nome, closing the bargain with Captain Bernard. The season was already at its most favorable stage. late. Knowing this, the Captain made the hastiest preparations and set sail on August 20, 1922.

A vote of three thousand dollars was given me by the Canadian Government before the Teddy Bear actually sailed but not in time to affect the sailing date, which had been determined by the help of my American friend.

The season of 1922 proved to be particularly icy in the region north and northwest of Bering Straits. Contrary to popular opinion, the amount of ice in a certain part of the polar sea any given summer has no relation to the temperature that summer and depends only on the winds that prevail in the wide region surrounding the area you want to navigate. Generally speaking ,there is ice between Wrangell Island and the mainland of Asia when the winds are from the northeast, north or northwest. The favorable winds are from the east, southeast, and south.

Captan Bernard made a faithful try. He followed the edge of the ice westward. Sometimes he ventured a little way out into it and was nearly caught,

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the vote was made on the basis of the followin g written appeal summparizing (though by no means completely) many conversations I had had both with the Minister and Deputy Minister of the Interior:

Wide space "Ottawa, Aug. 8, 1922.

Dear Mr. Cory:

Attached is the brief statement you asked for to be presented to Council on Friday. Please urge upon Council that there are on Wrangell Island four men in Canadian service whose lives are in danger. The arctic summer is nearly over.

Respectfully,

(Signed) V. Stefansson.

Hon. W. W. Cory, Deputy Minister of the Interior, Ottawa, Ontario Wide space

Statement Regarding Men Now in Danger On Wrangell Island

The facts with regard to the Expedition now on Wrangell Island are in the hands of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior. The men went to Wrangell Island to hold it/for the Empire and Canada, and I had no other motive in sending them there. I have spent on this enterprise all my own money and all I can borrow. Our claims to the island are clear and we should hold it. But the four men there have now been isolated for one year; they may be ill for all we know. They were confident, as I was, that I could get support to send a ship to them. We could have borrowed money had we received a lease in time, but this is now probably too late. A ship can be chartered in Nome to take supplies to Wrangell and to bring out such of the men as want to come out - total cost of charter and supplies about $5,000.00. Can the Government advance this money in some way? - details of repayment, etc., to be settled later.

When our men were on Wrangell in 1914 the American Government sent a cutter for them at many times the cost of the present enterprise. These now are our own men - a Canadian expedition engaged in a service for Canada. They have already accomplished their task and now need help.

Our arrangements are all made through the Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company, Credit Foncier Building, Vancouver. Credit should be telegraphed there so arrangements can be made with Nome.

This Company was incorporated for the single purpose of securing Wrangell Island to Canada.

(Signed) V. Stefansson. Wide space

The season of 1922 proved to be particularly icy in the region north and northwest of Bering Straits. Contrary to popular opinion,

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the amount of ice in a certain part of the polar sea any given/summer has no relation to the temperature that summer and depends only on the winds that prevail in the wide region surrounding the area you want to navigate. Generally, speaking, there is ice between Wrangell Island and the mainland of Asia, when the winds are from the northeast, north or northwest. The favorable winds are from the east, southeast, and south.

Captain Bernard\made a faithful try. He followed the edge of the ice westward. Sometimes he ventured a little way out into it and was nearly caught,

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an event to be carefully guarded against here although not serious in the arctic north and northwest of Europe. If you get your ship fast in the ice of the European arctic you drift south into open water and freedom. If you get fast in the ice to the north of Alaska or eastern Siberia you drift with it to the northwest, being inevitably frozen in and carried across the polar ocean unless the ship is broken and sunk. This has been proved by scores of whaling ships and by De Long's Jeannette, Nansen's Fram, my own Karluk, and more recently by Amundsen's Maud.

Had the Teddy Bear been frozen in, it would have meant not only the loss of the ship but also that she would have been powerless to help the men on Wrangell Island. No one could be better aware of this than Captain Bernard, and so he was wise in running no risk of being caught. He retreated again and again barely in time and followed along westward until he came to where further progress was impossible because the ice touched the Siberian coast. He climbed high headlands in one or more places and saw the ice lying heavily packed twenty or thirty miles out to sea. There arose later rumors that Bernard could have reached the island had he tried harder. These must have originated among people who did not understand the conditions, and they were eventually completely removed by the testimony of the Wrangell Island party itself, who watched from the hills of the island the same ice that Captain Bernard saw from the hills of the continent. *

On September 23, 1922, Captain Bernard returned to Nome and the Lomen Brothers reported to me by wireless his failure to reach the island. This did not cause me any great worry, for I knew that, barring accident or sickness, the men were safe. The chances of accident were not many for careful men; the chances of good health are nowhere in the world better than in the Arctic. It is, in fact, one of the chief reasons why arctic explorers always go north again. You cannot be unhappy when you are exuberantly healthy. Describe a blizzard -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * The text of Captian Bernard's report is printed in the Appendix to this book.

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vividly and correctly to a man in the south. He will shudder at the thought, pity the poor fellows who have to struggle through such a storm, and will congratulate himself that he is safe from it. But take that same man north and the climate and conditions will change his temperament so that the howling of a gale outdoors becomes a challenge with an agreeable thrill and difficult to resist. When you are well dressed and have mastered the technique of northern travel you face with delight a blizzard which your twin brother in the south shudders to read about.

Although Bernard had not succeeded, I felt much better because he had been able to try. Had financial difficulties prevented me from sending a ship at all, I should have been worried by my incompetence inability to hold up my end of the bargain with the boys. There had been the understanding that they would go into the field and do the actual work of keeping the flag flying while I was to have what they considered the easier if not the pleasanter task of converting those in power to the wisdom of our plans. Had the ocean been clear at Wrangell Island they would have had no theory upon which to explain the absence of a ship except my failure to interest Canadians in what we were trying to do for Canada and the Empire, and that would have hurt them who knew so well their own unselfishness and who expected the approval so confidently. But Bernard had told us that the ice had been blocking the way. That made my mind easier, for I knew the boys must have seen the same ice and must have placed upon it and not upon me or Canada the blame for keeping the ship away. I considered they would, accordingly, face the winter cheerfully, not conscious that what they were doing was being cousidered by their countrymen more foolish and less glorious than they had imagined.

As the winter advanced, my attitude about Wrangell Island remained unchanged except that I began to worry a little that I might get receive a wireless message any time from some place in Siberia. The understanding when the party sailed had been that they would certainly not leave the island by sledge during the winter of 1921-1922. There had been the suggestion that they might make a quick

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trip in March of that year to the Siberian mainland to send out letters and despatches through one of the American or Russian traders, but we had decided against that for two reasons. We had nothing to gain, and there would be considerable expense. There would not even be by any increase of peace of mind to the relatives, for anyone who fears that the journey from Wrangell Island to the mainland may possibly be dangerous will feel no differently about the journey back from the mainland to Wrangell Island. so that The very men who had come through danger to reported their safety by letter might just as easily be lost on the way back. If the letters taken out were to be of any value in guiding our policy the following summer they would have to be carried by messenger at least seven hundred miles overland from the first trader south of Wrangell into whose hands they were given, and that would be costly out of proportion to anything that we might hope to gain. I am sure that in all this reasoning I had the complete agreement of the families of Knight and Maurer who had become familiar with polar conditions through several years of association. The families of Crawford and Galle I knew were considerably worried.

But while no trip was to be made to the mainland the winter 1921-22, our plans left the matter optional for 1922-23. This was the second year on the island and homesickness might have developed. Crawford in particular would be anxious to get out so as to continue his university studies. They were to discuss the matter thoroughly on the island and come to an/agreement. My general urging was that even the second winter they should all remain through, waiting for the ship that was practically certain to come the second summer. One year in ten or so may be expected to keep a ship out, but two bad seasons, one following the other, were so unlikely that the chance was negligible. But if it seemed that certain information must be sent to me or that there were other adequate reasons for leaving the island, then the party might make their own decision. They might all Two of them might then come across to Siberia and might remain with some trader south of Wrangell till navigation opened,or make the seven hundred-mile journey to Bering Straits, as they thought best. If only some wanted to go, then The other two would remain on the island until the ship came in 1923. while the

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other two crossed over. The danger of crossing was somewhat greater than that of staying on the island but, since all of us considered the journey to the Siberian mainland a comparatively simple one, it is difficult to say now whether we weighed the danger at all in our planning.

Although somewhat difficult and expensive, a journey by our men from Wrangell Island to the outside world could have been undertaken any time between January and April with the purpose hope of reaching "civilization" a month or two before the opening of arctic navigation. Doing this might seem advisable to them on the basis of what they knew about conditions on Wrangell Island. Their objectives purposes in the island were two - the continuance of occupation and the gathering of knowledge. The occupation had been accomplished. and Knowledge even when recorded in notebooks and photographs, is the most portable of commodities. They could, therefore, leave the island if they liked. But a journey from the outside to Wrangell Island similarly undertaken in winter by myself, for instance, would not be have been practical. The island could be reached before spring, but a party coming over the ice from Siberia could bring to the island no appreciable amount of supplies. The only way in which succor could can be brought in winter to a party isolated on Wrangell Island would be there is by sending in a hunter of greater skill than the ones on the island. But we had no reason to fear that assistance was needed and no reason to think that the skill of the men on the island was inadequate to meet the situation. In consequence I attempted no active undertaking during the winter 1922-1923, devoting myself merely to writing and speaking along lines which I thought would eventually bring conviction to the public and the Government, wau and win from them the sympathy and support we needed.