Letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson to Alfred J. T. Taylor, 14 September 1921

^ Taylor ^

September 14th, 1921.

Dear Taylor:

I think I forgot to reply to that paragraph of your letter of August 18th in which you asked about the the difference of opinion between Amundsen and me as to animal life in the polar region.

If you will read over the sections of my book which deal with the methods of seal hunting you will see at once that Amundsen could not have made his statements had he had the faintest notion of how seals live in the ocean, and how they may be secured. Similarly, the fact that a bear found in 84° north latitude was in a starving condition signifies nothing if you understand how a bear hunts seals and why it is impossible that a bear should get a seal in a region where the ice is unbroken. The whole things hinges on a knowledge of the habits of seals, which Amundsen, to judge by the quoted interview, does not possess.

We lived and traveled for two years in a region where we never saw a bear, nor even a track of a bear, and yet we lived for the whole time by hunting and most of the time on seals. Seal hunting, where the ice is heavy, resembles prospecting for oil much more than it does hunting rabbits in a bush. If you believe there is no mineral oil in England you might be, in other respects, very intelligent, and you might live in England, a long time without discovering oil. The mere fact that you had seen^, no oil^ that in England should signify little to any one who understands that you never looked for it and never dreamt it could be there.

If it seems remarkable that I understand exactly how seals are hunted and that Amundsen does not, I admit that it does seem remarkable. However, a reading of my books and of his, and a conversation with him and with me will clearly show that, while remarkable, the situation is true.

Amundsen is quoted as saying that the ice is so thick that if you wanted to catch fish you could do so only by using a great deal of dynamite. This is so ridiculous that I must blame the newspaper reporters rather than Amundsen, for surely he could say nothing of that sort. Nansen, whom he so much admires, has stated, and quite correctly, that sea ice does not attain by freezing a depth more than seven feet. Now it is well known that commercial fisheries are being carried on on the Athabasca Lake through ice at times much more than seven feet thick, and that without use of dynamite. The winter of 1911 and 1912 we caught a good deal of fish through ice of that thickness. It does not take a skillful man with an ice chisel more than half an

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hour to get a hole through seven feet of ice, and a fish net fifty feet long can be set under the ice in half a day. When it is once set it can be satisfactorily tended after an expenditure of half an hour of time per day. If we were trying to fish in the polar ocean we would have no trouble in setting our nets nor in tending them. However, we never have done so because we never have been pressed for food. The seals are so much easier to secure and so much more valuable when you have caught them.

Mr. A. J. Taylor, 614 Credit Foncier Building, Vancouver, B. C., Canada.