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THE SECOND WINTER AND THE TRAGIC END 259

no experience of scurvy that he knew exactly how to cure
himself and would therefore be in no danger if left be-
hind. The disease had not developed sufficiently for
Maurer to recognize it; or, we may feel sure, he would
then have insisted that the trip to Nome be abandoned.

In the appendix section devoted to “The Fragmentary
Papers of Milton Galle,” the reader will find that when
first Galle heard Crawford and Knight discussing a trip
they intended to make from Wrangel to Nome via Siberia,
he puzzled over it and recorded in his diary that he
could not figure out why they planned to leave the island,
and did not believe that if they left it they would go in
the direction of Siberia. In the appendix we have spec-
ulated on where Galle may have thought they would
try to go. Here we mention his doubts in connection with
Fred Maurer’s letters to his wife, because they indicate
that he as well as Maurer was against the trip even
after all four understood that Nome was the real objec-
tive. Still they cannot have made very vigorous protests,
for Knight, who is fair to everybody in every part of
the diary, would have recorded them.

It is clear from all we know of both Crawford and
Galle that they would not have left Knight alone had
they realized his illness; this is still more clear of Maurer
who on the same Wrangel Island seven years before had
stood by his dying comrades to the last. I have discussed
this aspect of Maurer’s character with his commander on
Wrangel in 1914, John Munro (whonowlives in Berkeley,
California). Munro says emphatically, as I had also heard
from others, that no one of the Karluk party of seventeen
was more competent, staunchly loyal and uniformly un-
selfish than Maurer. “If I were to name the best comrade
I ever had under danger or hardship,” said Munro, “I