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THE EARLY HISTORY OF WRANGEL ISLAND 21

the name of Wrangel Island, cancelling the designation
of Kellett’s Land, which the island had borne for thirty-
two years, perhaps to emphasize that British discovery
rights were considered to have lapsed through prolonged
neglect and that American rights were being created in
their stead through exploration.

Following 1849 Wrangel Island (Kellett’s Land) had
been British by a discovery right that gradually lost its
value through neglect, until the Americans (or any other
nation) were free to occupy it; following 1881 the island
was similarly United States territory. But it seems ele-
mentary logic that if thirty-two years of British neglect
cancels British rights, an equally long period of neglect
by any other nation would cancel the rights of that
nation. We do not know of any record that anyone went
ashore on Wrangel Island for thirty-three years following
1881, although it seems likely that of all the many
American whalers who cruised in sight of the island
between that time and the end of the whaling about 1906,
some must have made a landing. Still, Wrangel Island
was considered to have become once more a “No Man’s
Land” open to colonization by any country that cared
to go to that much trouble for the sake of acquiring
ownership.

The Russian aspect of the story of Wrangel Island
has been well summarized in an article published in
“The Geographical Journal” of the Royal Geographical
Society of London for December, 1923. The article is
unsigned and therefore probably by the Editors of that
journal. We quote entire the portion of this paper that
relates to Russia.

“There seems to be.no record of any Russian ship having reached
this island until 1911. In the previous year the ice-breakers Taimuir

*For an account by a Russian member of this, the only known,
Russian landing, see Appendix IX, which
is a statment by one of the members of the Russian
expedition, [Leauteuard Transehe] is the Imperial Russian Navy.