stefansson-wrangel-09-30-005-004

OverviewTranscribeVersionsHelp

Facsimile

Transcription

Status: Complete

- 4 -

win their way to 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'd diary
tells, although there are certain fragments of additional inform-
ation. 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 that
day or else that Galle had not told him about these bears -
possibly because they did not meet until Knight had already written made
his entry
up his diary for the day.

With regard to the condition and movementof 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 con-
cluded from the noises they could 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 wreather cleared
they could see that 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 by the food supply there would have been direct statements to that effect, or at least indirect evidence, such as good 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 accompanying a statement that most or all the party remained in camp. The opposite inference is to be is clearly
drown, for found from the fact that when the weather was best and the hunt-
ing conditions were best the party generally stayedin camp.
Typical

Notes and Questions

Please sign in to write a note for this page

jessiesusan

Please look at the margin text, hard to read, I hope I got it all. Another set of eyes please :)

Samara Cary

Looks good!