Knight’s own diary entries from the expedition record his treatment of Ada with condescension and, at times, cruelty.

When he was too weak to express himself physically, he expressed his suffering as anger toward her.

He threw books.

He berated her.

He accused her constantly of not doing enough.

Ada’s diary entry about caring for Knight — written in her imperfect English — is one of the most direct and painful documents of what she endured:

“He never stop and think how much its hard for women to take for mans place, to wood work and to hund or something to eat for him and do waiting to his bed and take the shiad out for him.”

She gave Knight the best of the food she hunted.