harold-noice-01-03-05-002

-2- (Sydney Bulletin)

"the schooner North Star, with all the supplies of its
trader-owner, was bought, and another traddr named Duffy
O'Connor was bought out. In 1915 Stefansson bought the
large schooner Polar Bear, loaded with supplies, as well
as a smaller schooner, the Gladiator, in the same way, at
Arctic Ocean prices. The El Sueno was also chartered to
carry supplies. Large amounts were purchased from the
Hudson Bay Company and other traders at Herschel Island.
A large bill was purchased from the trading ship Herman in
1916, and in 1917 the Challenge was bought, and Hudson's
Bay Company stores, and the independent traders' stores
were bought in many cases. Practical results of 1917-18
were virtually limited to Storkerson's ice trip north of
the coast of Alaska. Bills ran to over half a million
dollars. "

This exploration de luxe was certainly a case of the
explorer "living off the country," but any stay-at-home pen-
sioner or Tite Branacle could have done it in the same sense.

In 1922 there appeared a pamphlet "by D. Jenness,
Victoria Memorial Museum, Ottawa," in which the writer not
only commented on the heroic finance of the explorer, but
alluded to another matter:---

"There is another side to this question of living
off the country....It involves the destruction of entire
herds of caribou and musk oxen---males, females, and young.
On Melville Island, one of the largest islands in the North,
where musk oxen are still found, Mr. Stefansson and his
companions killed, on their own estimate, about one-tenth
of the total number of musk oxen (400 out of an estimated
4000)....The musk oxen have already been almost exterminated
on the mainland of America and in Greenland. On Victoria
and Banks Islands they were destroyed by the Eskimos prior
to 1913, and the only places where they remain in any num-
bers are Ellesmere Island and a few smaller islands ad-
jacent to it. The caribou, too, have seriously diminished
in numbers, Their extinction round Coronation Gulf is well
within sight now, although in 1913 they could be counted
there by thousands. "

The vague impression which came to us during Stefansson's
stay here, that he was in some way the original discoverer of
the innumerable caribou and other food supplies and prospective
food exports in the Arctic, fades in the light of these remarks.
It seems both tame hunting and tame exploring to pursue the cow,
whetherplain, musk, or fancy, on an island where she is so close
up against the advancing tide of civilisation as to be the hope-
less victim of the census-taker. It suggests the unsportsman-
like habit of shooting the sitting bull on its nest.

Still there is an episode in the career of the gentleman
who pulled this simple country`s leg which left an enduring
mark. He had an inspiration to add to the British Empire
Wrangel Island, 100 miles north of Siberia. The alleged idea
was that it might serve a great purpose in connection with an
air service, or a bear service, or something. Wrangel Island
is a very considerable mass of frost-bitten rocks rising to an
elevation of 2300 ft. Under the auspices of the Stefansson
Exploration and Development Company, four enthusiastic
young men and a not so enthusiastic Eskimo cook-and-housekeeper
woman were landed in September 16, 1921, with promise of a visit
in six months or not much more.