MELVILLE FINDS REMAINS OF DELONG PARTY 343 



of sealskin pants, soaked and burned to a crust, but on the 2Oth they 

 found in a hut fishes enough to keep them alive for several days. 

 But their diet had induced dysentery, from which they were growing 

 very weak. 



While resting in an abandoned hut on the 22d they had the 

 good fortune, looking through a crack in the hut, to see a native, to 

 whom they lost no time in making their presence known. The 

 native, whose sympathy was aroused by their condition, brought 

 some others that evening, and putting the exhausted and half- 

 starved men on their deer sleds, they drove with them to their tents, 

 which were reached at midnight. Here they were given food. 

 Their rescuers proceeded with them the next day until they fortu- 

 nately met a Russian, to whom they succeeded in making known 

 their situation and the fact that they wished to be taken to Bulem. 

 They reached the place on the 29th. 



On the 3d of November the two men heard the door of their 

 hut in Bulem opened and to their glad ears came a familiar voice 

 speaking American words. It was Engineer Melville, who ex- 

 claimed, "Noros, are you alive?" 



The meeting was a joyful one, and the rescued seamen eagerly 

 told their story, Melville making a chart of the route described by 

 them and marking on it the location of the huts they had found, as 

 a guide in his intended immediate search for DeLong and his party. 

 The privations of the two men, however, gave him gloomy anticipa- 

 tions as to the fate of those they had left, the seamen themselves 

 being very sick from exhaustion and the dysentery caused by their 

 eating decayed fish. The very great probability was that those left 

 behind had perished. 



On November 5th Melville set out on his search of the Lena 

 delta, taking two dog teams, two natives and a ten days' supply of 

 food, and following the route he had charted from the account of 

 the two seamen. He had no difficulty in finding the route, some of 

 the huts described by them being reached, while from several native 



