Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1882 — DE LONG’S SAD FATE. [ARTICLE]

DE LONG’S SAD FATE.

T lie Discovery and Burial of the Bodies of the Brave Lieutenant and His Fellow-Explorers—They Were Found UnderJEight Feet of Snow. The New York Herald correspondent, with the steamer Rodgers, sends the following dispatch from the Lena Delta, under date of April 12: Melville found the bodies of DeLong’s party March 23. They were in two places, 500 and 1,000 yards from the wreck of the scow. Melville’s'seal ch party first started from the supply depot [here two words are unintelligible] to follow the Nindermen route from'Usterday to Walvev, and afterward from Walvey back toward Usterday. [The following sentence is again unintelligible.] They stopped at the place which Ninderman and Noros passed the first day after they left De Long, feeling sure that the others had not got much further. There they found the wreck, and. following along the bank, they came upon ajifle-barrel hung upon four sticks. [Here six words - —u»taJli<ahhs.l Jlhev,set,„tha,,natives digging on each side or rne sucks, and thqy soon came upon two bodies under eiglit feet of snow. While these men were digging toward the east Melville went on along the bank twenty feet above the river, to find a place to take bearings. He then saw a camp-kettle and the remains of a fire about a thousand yards from a tent, and, approaching, nearly stumbled upon DeLong’s hand sticking out of the snow about thirty feet from the edge of the bank. Here, under about a foot of snow, they found the bodies of DeLong and Ambler about three feet apart, and Ah Sam lying at their feet, all partially covered by pieces' of tent and a few pieces of blanket. AU others except Alexia they found at the place where the tent was pitched. Lee and Knack were close by in a cleft in the bank toward the west Two boxes of records, with the medicine chest and a flag on a staff were beside the tent. None of the dead had boots. Their feet were covered with rags, tied on. In the pockets of all were pieces of burnt skin and of clothing which they had eaten. * The hands of all were more or less burnt, and it looked as if when dying they had crawled into the lire, Boyd lying over the fire and his clothing being burned through to the skin, which was not burned. Collins’ face was covered with cloth. All the bodies were carried to the top of a hill 200 feet high, about forty versts to the southwest from where they were found, and there interred in a mausoleum constnitcod of wood from the scow, built in the form of a pyramid twenty-two feet long and seven high, surmounted by a cross twenty-two feet high and a foot square, hewn out of drift wood and conspicuous at a distance of twenty versts. The mausoleum was covered with ■stones, and is to be sodded in the spring. The cross is inscribed with the record and names of the dead, cut in by the search party* At ter completing the tomb the party separated to search the della for traces of Chipp’a people. Melville went to the northwest part of the delta, and west as far as the Oierek river. Ninderman took the center and Bartlett the northeast. Nmdermau and Bartlett found nothing. MelvUle has not yet returned.