185.2.] ADMIRALTY INSTRUCTIONS. 3 



vessels, and render it necessary for you to return without them to the 

 general rendezvous at Beechey Island ; and you will be most careful 

 along the line of such route, as well as in every other direction you may 

 have to take, to avail yourself of every remarkable promontory, point 

 of land, or other distinctive locality, to deposit exact notices of your 

 condition and intended proceedings ; and you are to give positive orders 

 that these notices or records are to be deposited ten feet true, north of 

 the cairn or staff, and likewise beneath or in the cairn itself. 



8. With regard to the Expedition to be despatched towards Melville 

 Island, it is scarcely to be contemplated that, under the most favour- 

 able circumstances, more coidd be done in the first season than to reach 

 that point ; and the officer in charge of that service will of course have 

 to take into account the having to winter in that quarter. 



9. His earliest attention in that case, in the ensuing Spring, will be, 

 1st, the depositing such supplies at Melville Island as he can spare, 



or endeavouring to convey them thither by sledges if he should not 

 reach the island with his ships ; and 2nd, the detaching travelling par- 

 ties in a westerly direction for the combined purpose of a search for 

 traces of Sir John Franklin, and of depositing notices in conspicuous 

 situations as to where the supplies are left, but being at the same time 

 strictly enjoined to return to their ships before the usual period of the 

 breaking up of the ice, in order that such ships may return to their ren- 

 dezvous at Beechey Island, or otherwise prepare for quitting Lancaster 

 Sound to return to England, according as the supplies on board of his 

 ships and the length of time consumed in the above service shall re- 

 quire. 



10. And here we think it necessary more particularly to call your 

 attention to the instructions to be given by you to the officer charged 

 with this branch of the Expedition ; for whilst there is a possibility of 

 your calculating on an early return of such officer from Melville Island 

 in the summer of 1853, and of his being able to afford you support in 

 any particular direction, it is, on the other hand, not improbable, that 

 from a prolonged detention to the westward, it may be his bounden duty 

 not to hazard a further stay in those seas, but to make the best of his 

 way home ; in which ease he must endeavour to communicate with the 

 rendezvous at Beechey Island before finally quitting Barrow's Strait, 

 in order to obtain information of the other ships, and to deposit re- 

 cords of his proceedings. 



11. He should therefore be made to understand the nature of the 

 responsibility that devolves upon him, both as to the execution of his 



