What then had befallen the lost vessel? She had become beset in the ice and drifted with the pack around the north end of Wrangell Island, and then west, until at the end of twenty-two months she had been crushed, and sunk on June 12, 1881, in latitude 77° 15´ N., and longitude 155 E. Two small islands, named Jeannette and Henrietta, had been visited some distance east of the scene of the catastrophe; but when the crews, saving themselves and what little they could on the ice, started to drag their boats and sledges homeward, they headed directly south, and soon found a new island, named Bennett, which is the northernmost of the New Siberia group. It would be a sad task, were it possible, to relate here the frightful hardships of that journey through the fast-gathering Arctic night toward the bleak coast of Siberia. Having passed the islands, open water was found, and the starving men embarked in their three boats for the mouth of the Lena; but soon they were separated in a storm, and each one proceeded as best he could. One boat foundered in the first gale. Another, in charge of Melville (now engineer-in-chief, U. S. N.), reached an eastern mouth of the river and ascended it to a Russian village. A third boat, with De Long and others, also reached the Lena delta, but only two seamen were able to proceed afoot to Bulun, a far-away Russian settlement. Melville heard of this, and made haste to start out searching parties, but they were too late. De Long and his crew had died of exhaustion, and it was not until the next season that their bodies and records were fully recovered. Nevertheless, as we are assured by experts, the results of this unfortunate expedition were important, physically and geographically. “They covered some 50,000 square miles of polar ocean, and clearly indicate the conditions of an equal area between their line of drift and the Asiatic coast.” De Long believed the Siberian ocean to be a shallow sea, dotted with islands; and his conclusions have been confirmed by the admirable scientific work since of Toll, Bunge, and other Europeans who have explored the Liachoff Islands and other places in that part of the Arctic realm. The desire for scientific study of the polar world had now become the motive for northern research, though men were still ambitious to reach the pole; and when Sir George Nares returned from the great British expedition of 1875, to tell how the men of the _Alert_ had reached a wintering-point beyond Robeson Channel, on the west coast of Greenland, in latitude 82° 27´ N., and that Markham and a sledge-party had gone about one degree farther (to 83° 20´ 26´´ N.), greater pride was felt in this fact, perhaps, than in the careful observations and collections that the ships had made. This remained the advance record until the memorable feat of Lieutenant Lockwood of the American Greely expedition eight years later.