stefansson-wrangel-09-30-004

 Appendix I

THE FRAGMENTARY PAPERS OF MILTON GALLE - - -

After the rest of this book had been written there came to light some fragmentary papers bearing on the period between July 18th and September 30th, 1922. That these had not been examined before was not through any direct fault of Mr. Harold Noice. In fact, it was he who brought them to our attention. Both in writing and speech he was known to have made several references to the "diary" of Milton Galle, but at that time we supposed that he had this diary and was keeping it away from us along with the portions he had torn out of the diary of Lorne Knight. Mr. Carl Lomen made inquireies at my suggestion and mr. Noice told him that he had been referring only to some fragmentary papers that contained little if anything of value. Then came Mr. Noice's published statement in the New York World of February 11, 1924 (printed ante) which referred to the diaries of all four of the Wrangell party. We seized upon this as a valuable admission that there were in existence papers never heretofore acknowledged by Mr. Noice. On M. Lomen's inquiring from him again he denied taht there were any diares of Crawford or Maurer but said that there had been a sort of diary of Milton Galle's. Later he wrote to Mr. J. I. Knight saying the same thing in substance and adding taht he had handed over Galle's diary to Mr. Taylor in Toronto who must have it. I then wrote Mr. Taylor, asking him to make a further search of the bozes left with him by Mr. Noice - supposed by Taylor to contain only odds and ends having value merely as keepsakes - articles found on Wrangell Island. In

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response to this letter a search was made and there was found a tin box about 3" x 4 1/2" x 1", half full of separate leaflets of paper cut to the size of the box. These were covered with fragmentary notes in part very difficult to decipher. The writing was faded but that was not the greatest difficulty. There were single words and phrases rather than sentences, and abbreviations which at first seemed to hide their meaning. The references first deciphered seemed to be largely to the weather and therefore not of great importance.

I received the notes shortly before leaving New York for Australia with a letter of apology from Mr. Taylor's office for having overlooked the box. I put it aside with the thought that the leisure of a sea voyage might enable us to decipher the notes and possibly to get out of them more than at first seemed likely.

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

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

Since Mr. Harold Hoice has alleged that Ada Blackjack was probably responsible for the death of Lome Knight because of grudges she had harbored against him for more than a year, it is of interest to note that there is in Galle’s record no indication of any friction with the Eskimo woman during the time covered. This, of course, accords with Knight’s own diary. Galle mentions with appreciation several things that Ada Blackjack did and speaks of pieces of work where she assisted Knight, evidently by her own choice.

From incidental references by Galle in three or four places we have confirmation of what Ada Blackjack told several people, that he had occupied much of his time in writing, for he speaks of keeping two diaries. One he refers to as his "notebook.” This was evidently kept in longhand. The other he speaks of as "the loose-leaf” and tells us that he occupied certain days in copying the written diary (the notebook) with a typewriter into

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his loose-leaf. This also confirms what Ada Black has said in describing the outfitting of the three men when they eventually left Wrangell Island over the ice, for she noticed that they packed up and took along many diary volumes. We now think what an especial pity it is that, with Galle’s diary being kept in duplicate, he did nt not leave on the island either the written or the typed copy. That he did not do so is one of the many proofs that when they were starting out it did not occur to them to reckon with the possibility that they might not reach Siberia safely.

With regard to the game on the island the summer 1922, we find in Galle’s notes in the main only confirmation of what Lorne Knight's diary tells, although there are certain fragments of additional information. On August 21st, for instance, Galle records that they had seen fourteen bears, five of which were cubs. This is a larger number of bears than mentioned by Knight for any day that summer. The implication is either that he forgot to make the entry or else that Galle had not told him about these bears - possibly because they did not meet until Knight had already written up his diary for the day.

With regard to the condition and movements of the sea ice we get no additional information from Galle’s notes, but they do throw a good deal of light on what the party were thinking about the ice. It seems that generally when the weather was thick so they could see only a few hundred yards from the beach, they concluded from the noises they heard of distant waves and from the motion of cakes along the beach that the ice was going away from the land or had gone away. But whenever the weather cleared they could see that

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the reasoning had been fallacious. A typical entry showing this is for August 23rd: "I go for short walk ... I could see ice from high places on tundra pretty sparsely strewn about two miles offshore; from there on an almost solid mass as far as I could see, about eight or ten miles."

While there are many expressions that can be interpreted to show hope or expectation that the ice would go, there is not one suggesting worry in case it did not go. Had they been concerned about the food supply there would have been direct statements to that effect, or at least indirect evidence, such as records of energetic and tireless hunting especially whenever the weather was particularly good. The opposite is the case, for the mention of unusually good weather is usually accompanied by a statement that most or all the party remained in camp. Typical entries showing that are the following: August 25th, "Sun out all day, snow disappears in a short time. Crawford prints pictures. All stay in. " August 26th, "Weather good, sun out all day, wind west-south-west. About six miles of young ice along beach. Hear geese several times. Crawford develops films." August 29th, "Best day this year, calm most all day, sun out also though [temperature] not over 36° . . . Crawford prints pictures when I finish developing some films. Developed seven rolls . . . Crawford and Knight see northern lights shortly after midnight, stars visible some nights now." September 29th, "Weather good ... all stay in; nothing attempted." Several of these later entries were written after the party had given up hope of a ship coming in that year, as we know both from Knight and Galle. This last entry mentions incidentally that the