stefansson-wrangel-09-06-131-003

-3-

take there the small gasoline schooner Orion and proceed to their destin-
ation. Next winter they will occupy themselves in trapping foxes, hunting
polar bears, and in the spring in killing walrus. These activities in them-
selves should yield a handsome profit on this year's investment. However,
my main purpose in sending them was to have them resident there, so as to
constitute British occupation of the territory. This will give me a
chance to say to the British Government that but for my occupation of the
island it might next year have fallen into the hands of either Japan or
Russia and that they should, therefor, in gratitude to me give me a lease
on the island. I have no doubt this argument will work, for Sir Auckland
Geddes, the British Ambassador, has already told me that it seems to him
reasonable and that he knows the temper of the present British Government
is such that they will be ready to recognize the validity of exactly that
kind of argument.

Dr. George Jennings,
Northern Pacific Hospital,
Missoula, Montana.

P.S. Please give me your reply by night letter, collect, addressed to
me at the Harvard Club, New York. I will then make arrangements by telegram
with the Vancouver office so that the transaction shall be legal. I am not
much up on business procedure and have already had some trouble with the
laws of Vancouver British Columbia because I handed cash personally over to some wholesale
hardware and grocery people in Seattle in buying supplies for the expedition,
where I should have transmitted the money to Vancouver and had the Vancouver
office buy the supplies.