stefansson-wrangel-09-26-001-005

THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGELL ISLAND

CHAPTER 1
The Background of the Story

The story of Wrangell Island has developed into adventure and
tragedy, but it began in a new scientific conception of the nature of the earth
as a whole and the relative position and importance upon it of the so-called
Arctic regions. It hinges also upon the developments in aeronautics which began
twenty years ago last December when the Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk.

"As impossible as flying" and "as worthless and the Arctic" were
solemn figures of speech as the beginning of our century. The first is now
ridiculous; the second is beginning to be questioned even by the general public -
otherwise the value and ownership of Wrangell Island would not have occupied so
much space during the last two years in the newspapers, those faithful mirrors of
the interests of the average man.

The newspapers have been telling us that at least three great
centuries - the United States, Great Britain and Russia - have legal claims to
Wrangell Island, and are either pressing those claims or considering whether
the intrinsic or positional value of the island may justify pressing them later.
Such public interest and such international negotiations would not be conceivable
if the leaders of thought still held the ideas about the climate and character
of the Arctic which were nearly universal twenty years ago. But granting the
change of thought of the last two decades, keen public interest would still remain
unthinkable but for the recent developments in air transport.

Our views on air transport are new; but there is one sense in which
our "new" ideas about the Arctic are 400 years old.

Few beliefs have ever had such universal support as that of the