46 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



tions or game, and soon began to experience the direst hardships. Quite likely 

 they have all perished long before this — a sad reduplication of the fate of Sir 

 John Franklin and his command, under almost the same circumstances, on the 

 American instead of the Asiatic continent. 



In the meantime the Russian Government has taken an active interest in 

 the matter. M. Siberiakoff, himself an experienced arctic explorer, has tendered 

 the use of his vessel, the Lena.- James Gordon Bennett has ordered and provid- 

 ed means for the most energetic efforts and our own Government has sent out 

 Lieut, Harber and Master Scheutze of the U. S. Navy, both of whom have ar- 

 rived before this time at Irkutzk, to assist in the search. If Lieut. DeLong has 

 been found and is in condition to do so, he will take command of the new expe- 

 dition, otherwise, Lieut. Harber, who is next in rank, will assume command. 

 Engineer Melville in his official dispatches assumes a cheerful tone and says that 

 he has every reason to hope to find DeLong and his party, but in his private let- 

 ters to his wife he holds out no hope whatever. 



There is hardly a possibility that one of the wanderers will be found alive. 

 As late as the middle of January, DeLong's party, which had been lost in a wild- 

 erness for many weeks, was still untraced. Only by a miracle can any of its 

 members have survived the winter. It is not unlikely that the searchers will 

 come across successive graves, and a last unburied body, but even this satisfac- 

 tion may fail to be attained. There is less probability that the fate of Chipp's 

 company will ever be known.* 



WEST INDIAN GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



BY CAPTAIN E. L. BERTHOUD. 



Mr. Alphonso Pirrard, a French savan in a late trip in the West Indies, has 

 visited Saint Domingo. Here he ascertained that the remains of Christopher 

 Columbus discovered in the cathedral in 1877, are the true remains; and that 

 the bones transported to the Havana in 1755 are not those of the celebrated nav- 

 igator, but are those of his grandson, which were lying in a contiguous vault. 



After some interesting researches at Samana Bay, which furnished him a 

 skull and the incomplete skeleton of one of the aboriginal inhabitants of Hayti, 

 he also found a series of Indian inscriptions in the grottoes of the coast. 



Proceeding to the Havana, Mr. Pirrard found in the Archives of Cuba, sev- 

 eral articles of high interest, elucidating the geographical discoveries of the last 

 century in the range of the Rocky Mountains. One of these is the journal of the 

 French Canadian Jacques L' Eglise, who discovered the sources of the Missouri, 

 and who relates that a short distance west of the head waters of the Missouri 

 another stream took its origin, which from the account of the Indians finally emp. 

 ties into the Pacific Ocean. — [^Translated from V Exploration. ^ 



* Dispatches just received from Melville announce the finding of DeLong and party, all dead, at the 

 Lena Delta, about March 24th. His books and papers w^ere all found. — [Ed. Review. 



