The religious framing is consistent with her background at the Methodist mission school. Ada was a Christian by her education and, apparently, by her practice; she brought a Bible with her on the expedition, and references to faith appear in the available accounts of her time on the island. The gratitude expressed in the July 23 entry was not performative — the entry was not written for an audience she expected to have immediately; it was written as a genuine communication to the future and a genuine record of her state of mind at that moment.
The typewritten journal as a whole also demonstrates something practical: the expedition’s typewriter was functioning, Ada could use it, and she understood that a typed, dated record was more formal and more readable than handwritten notes made under conditions of cold and isolation. She was thinking about the documentary record of her presence on the island — thinking, in a specific sense, about what the future account of her experience would show.
This quality of self-documentation, of maintaining a record that could speak for her if she could not speak for herself, becomes significant in light of what happened after the rescue. When Noice took her papers and manipulated the documentary record, the typewritten messages from July — addressed explicitly to rescuers — were part of what he acquired without her consent. The documents she had maintained specifically for the purpose of establishing her account were then used against her.
## Polar Bear Management: The Platform and the Gun Rack