THE FATE OF HERR ANDREE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12351, 13 May 1902, Page 3

THE FATE OF HERR ANDREE.

ADDITIONAL PARTICULARS. Herr Aiidree, tho famous aeronaut, whoso hair-brained dash for tho Pole in a balloon, accompanied by two intrepid Swedes, won him such fame, lies dead with his two companions on the barren lands of far northern Canada, above the limits of the further posts of the Hudson Bay Company. The trio of daring men who essayed to reach the Pole by balloon were (writes the Canadian correspondent of the Sydney Herald) victims of the arrows of the barbarous and uncivilised natives of tho far north. It was in the spring, three years ago, that tho tale of disaster to Andrce was brought to Fort Churchill, where Ashton Alston is in charge. An Eskimo who had been hunting in tho far north in the no man's land of northern Canada, just within the Arctio circle, arrived at tho store with a number of pelts to trade them for goods of tho company. As he waited in the store ho was attracted by the pictures on the walls of tho Androo balloon, and the descriptive matter with it, and to the amazement of tho agent lie bc-gan to tell of the death of tho trio of Po!e-se;'kcrs. Away up beyond tho barren lands, be said, and in the frigid zone, he had met a band of tho Arctio huskies, the wild natives who know only of tho whito men by the stories of the tribesmen further to the south. Those tribes eat their moat raw, having no wood to cook with, and they are as uncivilised and as barbarous as the Central African tribesmen. Wliilo the Eskimo trapper was among them they noticed his tobacco, and told him where he could get more. The huskies had a store of it. The shaman of the tribe took up the thread of a tragio tnle, and he told the trapper that a big something had come, floating through tho air. It looked liko a big " oomiyak," which is a canoo for tl\e women, one of the largest 'boats of the tribes living on the coast lino of Hudson's Bay, who have their kyaks for one or two men, and oomiyaks, which correspond to tho war canoes of tho Pacific Coast people. The tribesmen had seen the oomiyak a long distance away. It was floating along not far from tho earth, and when it settled to the ground they approached it, after overcoming their fear. Some were opposed to going near it, fearing because they could not understand it; but curiosity overcame fear, and they advanced nearer. As they drew near three white men stepped from , the balloon—for it was evidently the missing Omen from the description given—and they walked towards the huskies holding rifles in their hands.

k As the white men came forward one of the huskies fitted an arrow to his bow and fired. As lie did, there was a loud report, and the man wh« fired fell dead. Then the huskies sot upon , the throe white men, and although four of them were killed, they speedily slew this trio with their bows of bono and horn, which shoot an arrow with a good force. Quickly the intrepid Swedes who sought tho oft-sought Polo were slain, and their bodies left to freeze on the snow of the no man's land of the far Canadian North. The oxl>loreis dead, tho huskies rushed to the strange oomiyak to plunder it. They found rifles, the use of which they did net know; cartridge!!, _ whoso uses were to thorn unknown, knives, cooking utensils, and other gear; the compasses, instruments, and other things, which were things unknown, and therefore revered articles to tho Indian. Everything was apportioned among the tribe, nml carried oil to the huts of tho people. Tim bodies of the dead were left for the animals of tho northern icefields, and there, far from , the Pole he had sought to find, the prized Omen lay on the snow plain a wreck, a plundered and forlorn-looking wreck. This was tho t-ragio ending of the expedition which began under circumstances of such world-rcnownod display. King Oscar himself had shaken the brave men's hands before they stepped into the great car of the Ornon, and hundreds of noted men had wrung their handfi in farewell clasp. Tho press of tho lands about the seven seas had echoed their fimo, and there, in the great eilenco of tho big untrodden plains of the barren north, the three lay dead on tho ice—the victims of blind, uncivilised tribes who knew not what they did. At first it was not believed when tho Eskimo told his tale of horror, but now comes full confirmation of the tragio tale. Mr Alston supplied tho trapper with a grub stoke and despatched him again to the solitudes to find the northern huskies who had told the talo of death in order to secure- further evidence of Andrce's fate, and to attempt, if possible, to locate the scone of the historical tragedy. For two years tho trapper sought the nomadic tribesmen, who, unliko the wast Indians, who settle down in their villages to spend all their days, follow the feed as do the fishes. Where the deer arc there they are. Whore the fish are plentiful there mil you find tho nomadic tribesmen. Hβ failed'to'find the tribe who had told him of tho explorers' death, but he discovered further evidence bearing on then , fate. Somo of the knives were located; one of the rifles and other thinp belonging to tho dead explorers wore Touml in the possession of somo northern Indians, who told how they bad passed from one to the oilier in barter, and from many sources the tale of death was learned, and it was ever told the same-each and everyone who had tod tho tale said that the three strange white men worn killed with the bows and arrows of the huskies, and lay dead on tho northern ice, alongside their plundered balloon.