THE FINAL SEARCH. 853 



sometimes fighting the storm, sometimes running be- 

 fore it. 



They were compelled to return to Kas Karta, and 

 now having made up another team for Bartlett, Mr. 

 Melville sent him to Mat Vai with instructions to work 

 his way northward on the largest branch of the river 

 he mio-ht find, while he and Nindemann would work 

 from the northward to the southward. Both parties 

 left at the same time. Bartlett ran for Mat Vai, which 

 he reached, but Mr. Melville and Nindemann were 

 obliged to camp out all night in the snow, only reach- 

 ing. Qu Vina the next day, where Bartlett afterward 

 joined them. They were all working at terrible disad- 

 vantage, owing to the storm which raged almost inces- 

 santly, but at length, leaving Bartlett at Qu Vina, Mr. 

 Melville and Nindemann set out from Mat Vai when 

 the weather had cleared, with the purpose of going to 

 the westward along this bay from headland to head- 

 land as far as the mouth of each river. 



" We followed the bay," says Mr. Melville in his nar- 

 rative, " until late in the evening, having visited all 

 the headlands ; finally we came up to the large river 

 with the broken ice. I jumped up on the headland or 

 point of land making down in the bay and found where 

 an immense fire had been made. The fire bed was 

 probably six feet in diameter, large drift-logs hove into 

 it, and a large fire made, such as a signal fire. I then 

 hailed Nindemann and the natives, saying, ' Here they 

 are ! ' They thought that I had found the place where 

 the De Long party had been. Nindemann came up on 

 the point of land, and said that neither he nor Noros 

 had made a fire of that kind, only a small fire in the 

 cleft of a bank ; but he was sure that this was the 

 point of land they had turned going to the westward, 



