stefansson-wrangel-09-34-005

She was young, still in her twenties, and of
a race separated from the Caucasian by twenty thousand years
of evolution. She had been alone on the island with four
white men for nineteen months. Now three of those men were
dead, and the fourth lay dying, and she took up a pencil and
began a diary.

"Made in March 14, 1923.
the first fox I caught was in feb 21st and then
second march 3 and 4th 5th that makes four white
foxes and then in march 13th 1 caught three white
foxes that makes seven foxes altogether. 14th I
got headach a1 day I'm taking asperin it seems
didn't work. Oh yes in 13th I got new army pans.
On 14th of March I set eight places of traps two
in each place. 15th I was over to the traps no
sign of fox fresh tracks. and I put new sole on
felt slippers and wash the dishes and I feel much
better than yesterday. Very clear al day."

When thoughts are in one language and words must
be set down in another, writing is not easy. She had learned
to use a pencil as a child in the mining camp, and later the
mission school in Nome taught her to spell in English, but this
she was about to do would be no classroom exercise in composi-
tion. This was to be a setting down of feelings, and fears, of
hopes and happenings, the painstaking truth told in sentences
which behaved, at first, like disjointed wooden dolls. Even so,
it must be done. Each day the man in the tent was growing
weaker. Some days he could scarcely write at all. What was