Five sleds and three boats were dragged by almost superhuman exertions, the sick feebly aiding the sturdy in the work.  Imagine the disappointment, and despair of the leader, when, after a full week of this cruel labor, with provisions ever growing more scanty, an observation showed him they were actually twenty-eight miles further away from their destination than when they started!  While they were toiling south, the ice-floe over which they were plodding was drifting more rapidly north. Nil desperandum must ever be the watchword of Arctic expeditions, and DeLong, saying nothing to the others of his discovery, changed slightly the course of his march and labored on.  July 19 they reached an island hitherto unknown, which was thereupon named Bennett Island.  A curious feature of the toilsome march across the ice, was that, though the temperature seldom rose to the freezing point, the men complained bitterly of the heat and suffered severely from sun-burn.

[Illustration:  DELONG’S MEN DRAGGING THEIR BOATS OVER THE ICE]

At Bennett Island they took to the boats, for now open water was everywhere visible.  DeLong was making for the Lena River in Siberia, where there were known to be several settlements, but few of his party were destined to reach it.  In a furious storm, on the 12th of September, the three boats were separated.  One, commanded by Lieutenant Chipp, with eight men, must have foundered, for it was never again heard of.  A second, commanded by George W. Melville, afterward chief engineer of the United States Navy, found one of the mouths of the Lena River, and ascending it reached a small Siberian village.  Happy would it have been had DeLong and his men discovered the same pathway to safety, but the Lena is like our own Mississippi, a river with a broad delta and a multiplicity of mouths.  Into an estuary, the banks of which were untrodden by man, and which itself was too shallow for navigation for any great distance, remorseless fate led DeLong.  Forced soon to take to their sleds again, his companions toiled painfully along the river bank, with no known destination, but bearing ever to the south—­the only way in which hope could possibly lie.  Deserted huts and other signs of former human habitation were plenty, but nothing living crossed their path.  At last, the food being at the point of exhaustion, and the men too weary and weak for rapid travel, DeLong chose two of the sturdiest, Nindemann and Noros, and sent them ahead in the hope that they might find and return with succor.  The rest stumbled on behind, well pleased if they could advance three miles daily.  Food gave out, then strength.  Resignation took the place of determination.  DeLong’s journal for the last week of life is inexpressibly pitiful: 

“Sunday, October 23—­133d Day:  Everybody pretty weak.  Slept or rested all day, and then managed to get in enough wood before dark.  Read part of divine service.  Suffering in our feet.  No foot-gear.