| Summary: | Wrangell Island Lures Russians: Expedition Is On Way To Locate On Desolate Land. WRANGELL ISLAND LURES RUSSIANS. Expedition Is on Way to Locate on Desolate Land. NOME, Alaska, July 10. (/P)—A Russian expedition was today on its way to colonize AVrangell Island, in the Arctic ocean north of Siberia, and rename it Lenin Mitroff. The expedition, in a Russian Icebreaker, the Krasny Okitbr (Red, October), was scheduled to leajve East e*.pe, Siberia, the west side of Bering strait, June 25 for the island, or Mitroff, rechristened in memory of Nikola Lenin, considered the creator of soviet Russia. To Wrangell Island, for whose exploration and colonization loss of 18 lives in three expeditions has been visited in 13 years, the Krasny Ok- tibr was taking 20 families of Chuckchees (Siberian Eskimos), 100 dogs and 25 reindeer. Equipment of the colony included 3000 reindeer pelts for clothing and six Umiaks, or large Eskimo skin boats. Provisions on the Red Oktibr for Lenin Mitroff were calculated to last three years. Call It Unhabitable. Alaska, July 10. (/P)--Those here apparently familiar with the history of Wrangell island, or Lenin Mitroff, pronounce it unhabitable. This because of cold, Inaccessibility, absence of fuel and extreme scarcity of food. Captain Kellett, in the British ship Herald, sighted Wrangell island, 85 miles north of Siberia, in 1849. A smaller island, 50 miles east of Wrangell and on which landing is pronounced almost impossible by reason of rocks rising perpendicular from the edge of the ice that perpetually holds these two bits of land in its grasp, was named after his ship. Captain Thomas Long of the whaling bark Nile of New London, Conn., in 1867 named Wrangell after a Russian explorer and Alaska governor. The first recorded landing on the island was by a party from the American government cutter Corwin in 1881. This party included John Muir, a naturalist, whose journal for that was known of the place.
|
|---|