stefansson-wrangel-09-32-030r

THE SECOND WINTER AND THE TRAGIC END 263

midwinter may at least be supposed to have had a deciding influence in preventing a reversal of the original plan
at the time of the first start—January 7th.

For the second start, January 28th, we have Crawford’s
definite statement that he considered another failure to
get away from Wrangel Island would be “disastrous.”
On that point there is room for disagreement—authorities equally qualified by experience will some side with
Crawford’s opinion for leaving the island, and some with
Maurer’s for staying as the safer policy. I would have
to be among those to side with Maurer, for if I did not
then all my printed books and all my exploring career
could be quoted against me.

But I do not want to be understood to say that I am
certain that if I had been on Wrangel Island I would have
voted for the entire party to stay there. I only mean
that if the one question had been the safety of all concerned I would have favored staying. But if the motives
being discussed had been boredom, a longing for news, a
feeling that the party had accomplished its purposes on
the island and might as well leave, a desire to give information to an arctic expedition presumably being out-
fitted in 1923—with any or all these motives before me I
should probably have said that if they felt like undertaking the long walk and the hard work of going to
Nome I saw nothing against it. Or had someone proposed that the easiest way to feed the dogs through the
winter was to take them to Siberia where feed was plentiful, I might have agreed. It is a part of our ordinary
arctic procedure to take dogs long distances in order to