“Omit no effort, spare no expense in securing safety of men in second cutter. Let the sick and the frozen of those already rescued have every attention, and as soon as practicable have them transferred to a milder climate. Department will supply necessary funds.” In the meantime J. P. Jackson, special correspondent of the _New York Herald_, had arrived at Irkutsk, on his way to the Lena Delta. The Navy Department detailed L. P. Noros to accompany him. Lieutenant Giles B. Harber, U. S. N., accompanied by Master W. H. Schuetze, had been sent to search for Lieutenant Chipp and his party. [Sidenote: _MELVILLE’S SEARCH_] Melville, with Nindemann and Bartlett as assistants, engaged three interpreters and reached Belun the second week in February. A month was spent in collecting dogs and provisions and establishing depots of supplies at Mat Vai and Kas Karta. On March 16, 1882, accompanied by Nindemann, Melville proceeded to a place called Usterda, where Captain De Long had crossed the river to the westward. A search was now made for the hut where Erickson had died. Snow covered the country and effectively obliterated all traces of previous travellers. Storms forced their return to Kas Karta, and a fresh start was made. The party divided to insure a more thorough search. “We followed the bay,” says Mr. Melville in his narrative, “until late in the evening, having visited all the headlands; finally we came up to the large river with the broken ice. I jumped upon the headland or point of land making down in the bay and found where an immense fire had been made. The fire bed was probably six feet in diameter, large drift-logs hove into it, and a large fire made, such as a signal fire. I then hailed Nindemann and the natives, saying ‘Here they are!’ They thought that I had found the place where the De Long party had been. Nindemann came upon the point of land, and said that neither he nor Noros had made a fire of that kind, only a small fire in the cleft of a bank; but he was sure that this was the point of land they had turned going to the westward, and that this was the river along which he and Noros had come....”