Loss Of The Jeannette

The San Francisco Cali, Apil 17, publishes a letter from Dr. H. C. Ledyard, an American now in Siberia. At Irkoutsk Ledyard met Lieut. Dannenhower, who gave Mm interesting details, of the loss of the Jeannette, from which the following extracte are made : Since the flrst f all when they were caught by the ice in trying to reacli Herald Island, they have never taken course, but were held as in the jaws of death, squeezed till every timber quivered, turned this way and that, thrown floating and then caught again and every hour in suspense, and never knowing when the ice would close upon them a little more and the deck sink beneath them. Throughout this strain they were well and trying to be cheerfu], working very hard, for the engine and men were barely able to keep the water out. They had to pump forLa year and a half. June 11, 1881, the crisis came. The ship showed greater straining than before; the deck qnivered, and in explicitably movements warned them. They prepared their boats and made their camp beside the vessel. She rose and turned in her eradle till her yards touched the ice. Then the rigginggave way and the masts lay prostrate. At 4 o'clock in the morning the floe parted and all went down. A cry of alarm called all to escape from the crevice in ice. It opened jast through the captain's tent. Then began the retreat. Twenty-nine days they struggled southward. Three hundred miles of broken ice were thus passed over ; four miles a day was thought good time. After one series of 14 days they were 27 miles further north than at flrst. While working over the ice, dragging three boats, they discovered Bennett island, to explore which they spent three weeks of their precious summer days, and expended much of their limited supply of food. To this detour those who survived attributed much of their suffering and the death of the commander with 19 men. After three months of this perilous and exhausting work they came to blue water, and then with fair winds took their course for the mouth of the Lena river. Melville's boat was stove against a block of ice. The captain's boat lost her mast and sail. The captain landed with all well, but abandoned the boat as the water wns shallow and would not make the channel of the river.