A MELANCHOLY PICTURE. 207 



more died, and the other two, not having strength 

 to bury them, dragged their bodies outside the hut 

 and left them there. These two then lay down in 

 bed together to await their own fate, and when one 

 of them died, the last man — the writer of the jour- 

 nal — had only sufficient strength remaining to push 

 his dead companion out of the bed on the floor, 

 and had soon afterward expired himself, only a few 

 days before the Norwegian party arrived. The 

 Russians had a large pinnace in the harbor and 

 several small boats on shore, but the ice at first 

 prevented them reaching the open sea, and latter- 

 ly, when the ice opened out, those who survived so 

 long were much too weak to make any use of the 

 boats. The shipwrecked Norwegians, therefore, 

 took advantage of the pinnace to effect their own 

 escape to Hammerfest, carrying with them the poor 

 superintendent's journal, which the Russian consul 

 at that port transmitted to Archangel. 



When I first visited this spot in 1858, I took a 

 photograph of it. 



Every thing then remained almost exactly as 

 the unfortunate Russians left it, and some of their 

 weapons, cooking utensils, and ragged fragments 

 of clothes and bedding lay scattered around. A 

 great many skulls and bones of bears, foxes, deer, 

 seals, and walruses also testified to their success as 

 hunters. We likewise found a curious implement, 

 like a miniature wooden rake, the use of which con- 

 trivance was a complete enigma to me until our 



