FINDING OP THE FIRST CUTTER. 469 



walk all Hie way. I, being unable to walk, was carried on 

 one of the sleds. When within twenty versts of Bulcour 

 the sleds broke down, first one and then the other, in the 

 dark night. The natives spent a long time in repairing 

 their sleds, and it was not till some time near morning that 

 we arrived at Bulcour. I then thought it best to leave the 

 greatest part of my load at Bulcour, to make for Kumak 

 Surka and then send back for them. The distance was 

 fifty versts, which we covered in fourteen hours. On bad 

 roads next day I arrived at Burulak, and the day following, 

 about midnight, at Bulun, after being absent twenty-three 

 days. 



I found that the 'commandant' had made no effort in the 

 search, but had been somewhere up north in the locality 

 attending to his own private business. There was a report 

 in the Russian newspapers that the Yakutsk government or 

 somebody else Russian had sent the deputy ispravnik or 

 some other person to aid and assist in the search. This 

 was not so. There was neither a doctor nor anybody else 

 sent to assist in the original search. Nobody accompanied 

 me except the two Yakut dog drivers." 



When Nindermann was searching for Lieutenant Chipp 

 on the northern coast of the Delta, in April 1882, as he ap- 

 proached the place where Lieutenant De Long landed he drove 

 out on the frozen bav, and found the first cutter imbedded 



^ / 



in the ice and buried in a snow-drift. She had filled with 

 water and frozen up as high as the rail both inside and out- 

 side. A few small articles were brought away by Niuder- 

 mann as relics. 



