A STRANGE INCIDENT. 375 



half-tent shelter had hung from the ridge-pole. Mr. Col- 

 lins was further in the rear on the inside of the tent. 

 Lee and Kaack were not found until after it was ascer- 

 tained by reading DeLong's diary that they had been carried 

 "around the corner out of sight;" then, by sounding through 

 the snow, their missing bodies were found in a cleft in the 

 bank. 



Lieutenant DeLong's pocket journal and pencil lay on the 

 ground beside him. It seemed apparent that he and his two 

 companions had died the day that the last entry was made. 

 In the camp kettle near by were some Arctic willows of 

 which they had made tea. 



" The place where the bodies of DeLong's party were 

 found," wrote Mr. Jackson, " is fifteen miles northeast of the 

 island of Stolboy, the prominent pillar-like rock in the Lena, 

 where the river branches east to Bykoff. DeLong had all 

 along imagined that Stolboy was a myth, and supposed he 

 had passed it long before. He was bewildered by the maze 

 of rivers flowing and intermingling on the dell a proper, and 

 in his own weak condition had put the distances accomplished 

 longer than they really were. 



" Fate seemed against him. Had he landed thirty miles 

 farther west he would have struck a village of natives who 

 reside north of Bulun all winter. He also passed by within 

 twenty versts of a hut where twenty reindeer carcasses were 

 hanging for the winter food. He had, unfortunately, no shot- 

 gun, from its having been left by his orders on the ice when 

 the Jeannette went down, and though deer were rare, there 

 was no lack of ptarmigan. On the day Noros and Ninder- 

 mann were sent away by DeLong a large flock of 200 ptar- 

 migan settled within a quarter of a mile of the party, but 

 none were shot. With a single shotgun in Alexai's hands 

 all might have been saved. The season was too late for 

 deer. 



" A strange incident, also, came to my knowledge at 

 Geemovialocke. It seems that some Tunguse natives, traveling 



