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.