Finally, in the spring of 1902, came the masterpiece. A long dispatch from Winnipeg announced that C. C. Chipman, head commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had received from Fort Churchill, the northernmost outpost of the company, several letters from the local factor, Ashtond Alston, in which the sad fate of Doctor Andrée and his comrades was contained. The news had been received at Fort Churchill from wandering Eskimos. It was to the effect that a tribe of outlaw mushers, up beyond the Barren Islands, had seen a great ship descend from the sky and had followed it many miles till it settled on the ice. Three men had got out and displayed arms. The savage hunters, totally unacquainted with white men, and far less with balloons, believed the intentions of the trio to be hostile and attacked them, eventually killing all with their bows and arrows, though the white men were armed with repeating rifles and put up a good fight. There were many other confirmatory details in the report. The mushers were found with modern Swedish rifles and with cooking and other utensils salvaged from the wrecked balloon. These reports led the late William Ziegler to write to the commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company for confirmation, with the result that the story was at once exploded in these words: “There is no probability of there being any truth in the report regarding the supposed finding of Andrée’s balloon. The chief officer of the company on the west coast of Hudson’s Bay who himself interviewed the natives on the matter, has reported as his firm conviction that the natives who are said to have seen the balloon imposed upon the clerk at Churchill, to whom the story was given. The sketches of the balloon which the company has been careful to distribute throughout northern Canada naturally gave occasion for much talk among these isolated people, and it is not greatly to be wondered at that some such tale might be given out by natives peculiarly cunning and prone to practice upon the credulity of those not familiar with them, or easily imposed upon.”