Letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson to Alfred J. T. Taylor, 16 May 1922

This is in reply to your letter of May 10th.

Through my experience two years ago with the slowness of the Ottawa authorities in making out a lease, I am a little worried about the speed of the present negotiations. However, I have the best assurance as you will see by the attached copies of two letters from Mr. Finnie. As Mr. Finnie took this up at the instance of Mr. Stewart and with the understanding that hurry was necessary I think that we may have luck. The new broom may be sweeping clean and Mr. King's machinery may be working more smoothly than Mr. Meighen's. Let us hope so!

I suppose you may have seen something in the newspapers on the 13th or 14th about the discussion in Parliament where Mr. Meighen's questions brought out the answer from the Government that the Canadian flag is now flying in Wrangle Island and they mean to keep it there. I think the most interesting part of the discussion was the remarks by Mr. Meighen and Mr. Guthrie which show that the former members of the conservative cabinet are at one with the Government on this issue at least.

My idea of the amount of money necessary is that we must find almost as much this year as we used last. Of course we can expect some return from the fur catch of Wrangel Island. I shall be well satisfied if Crawford's party gives us $10,000 worth of fur. This will mean that all the money that is now in the enterprise will have to stay in it, and for the present year, we shall have to find a little more than we will get from the furs. The trouble is that we shall have to spend our money before anything comes from the fur. We shall then need $10,000 at least this year, and probably more.

Since you are coming East, I shall not go into any of the details of how we can operate more cheaply in the future. That this can be done there is of course no doubt.

I think it might prove the best business to sublet the trapping rights of the island to some subject company such as the Hudson's Bay Company, or H. Lieves and Company of San Francisco - or possibly

Mr. A. J. T. Taylor...............2

Hibbard Stewart Company of Seattle.

The following is my schedule of movements: I expect to leave New York at the latest June 4th to be in Iowa City, Iowa, to receive an honorary degree on June 6th. This about the degree is confidential until it comes off (Note by the way what a beautiful reply this is to all the Anderson criticisms from Ottawa. Anderson and I were graduated from the University in the class of 1903. He was a great hero to them and I was a nonentity. Last winter he went to Iowa and gave out there a full page interview filled with violent denunciations. This is the answer he gets from the University).

It will be highly desirable if you could get to New York on or before the first of June. In case, however, you have no business in New York, I could arrange to leave here earlier and meet you in Cleveland or Chicago. I prefer a meeting in Cleveland or Chicago rather than in Detroit or any other city because Cleveland and Chicago are on my direct route to Iowa.

In case you should find it impossible to come East early enough to get to New York in time, or to meet me in Chicago before June 6th, then perhaps you had better delay a little so that we can meet in Chicago on June 8th or 10th.

I think you will get this letter in ample time, but in case there is hurry, send a night letter saying where we shall meet.

There is no information about Wrangel available that is any good. The best is from my own men who spent six months there. I can give it to you in a nutshell.

Ice conditions around Wrangel Island are usually bad in the early summer and usually good in the late summer and early fall. There are probably few seasons (not more than one in twenty) when a ship can not get to Wrangel Island in August or September. The country is a rolling, arctic prairie with low mountains in the interior. There are either no glaciers, or else some tiny ones scarcely more than snowbanks in the mountains. The amount of vegetation is probably rather less per square mile on the average in the North. From the reindeer point of view, the average of the arctic lands is estimated to be one reindeer per 25 acres. If we estimate that Wrangel Island will support one reindeer for each 50 acres, we shall be very conservative. The island is probably over eighty miles long and over thirty miles wide, making an area of about 2,500 square miles - giving grazing for at least 30,000 reindeer.

The Hudson's Bay Company is stocking Baffin Land with reindeer from Norway at a cost of nearly $200 per head. The cost is so great because of the high price of Norway and because of the distance of Norway from Baffin Island. At present I think we could buy reindeer in Siberia, opposite Wrangle Island, for less than $5 a head and we could carry them to Wrangel Island for about the same. We could then bring breeding stock to Wrangel Island for about $10 a head, which is about one-twentieth of what it costs in Baffin Island. The difficulty of marketing reindeer from Wrangel Island is greater than from Baffin Island, and the Seattle and Vancouver market would not be as good as the London market is for our Baffin Land product. After considering the case of stocking Wrangel Island, there should be an even larger return for the money in Wrangel.

One find thing about Wrangel is that there are no wolves. The only land animal there which stays the year round is the lemming, or bobbed tail mouse. Possibly there may be some weasels. The other land animals are the polar bear and white fox, both of which are really sea animals, the polar bears visiting shore only occasionally and the foxes staying ashore steadily through the summer and visiting the ice in winter.

Wrangel Island is probably the best trapping vantage in the world for white foxes. It is also a great place for polar bears. There are no fur seals, but it is a good location for securing the hair seal and is a fine place for walrusing. Ten or fifteen years from now when air navigation becomes common, it will be valuable as an air base on trans-polar routes between Europe, Asia and America.

Wrangel Island is also a good whaling base. The Japanese are already eating both whale and walrus, and, to a less extent, seal meat. All these tastes can be cultivated both there and in European countries. If we get the sole privilege for maintaining shore stations on Wrangel Island for walrusing, sealing, etc., we shall have in that a very valuable privilege.

Altogether, the anticipated lease of Wrangel Island should be very valuable.

I suggest that without mentioning the possibility of a lease and without saying that we shall have exclusive control of the island you talk to your friends on the basis of the fact that we do have an enterprise in the island already and that it will be a Canadian island. See if we can not get some of them interested on that basis.