246 PEASE AND SIMPSON'S DISCOVERIES. 



where they discovered a deposit of provisions which 

 Back had left there five years previously. The pemmi- 

 can was unfit for use ; but out of several pounds of 

 chocolate, half decayed, the men contrived to pick suffi- 

 cient to make a kettle-full of acceptable drink in honor 

 of the occasion. There were also a tin case and a few 

 fish-hooks, of which, observes Mr. Simpson, " Mr. Dease 

 and I took possession, as memorials of our having 

 breakfasted on the identical spot where the tent of our 

 gallant, though less successful precursor, stood that 

 very day five years before/' 



They had now obeyed their instructions to the letter ; 

 the coast-line was determined, and connected with what 

 was previously known to the eastward. It was time to 

 think of returning, but it still remained a question 

 whether some part of Boothia might not be united to the 

 continent on the eastern side of the estuary. Doubling, 

 therefore, its eastern promontory, they passed a point 

 of the continent which they named Cape Britannia, 

 and another called Cape Selkirk, and proceeded toward 

 some islands in the Gulf of Akkolee, so far as to satisfy 

 themselves that they were to the eastward of any part 

 of Boothia. By the 20th of August they had sailed far 

 enough to see the further shore, with its capes, of the 

 Gulf of Boothia, which runs down to within forty miles 

 of Repulse Bay ; and they then turned back. On their 

 return, they traced sixty miles of the south coast of 

 Boothia, where at one time they were not more than 

 ninety miles from the site of the magnetic pole, as deter- 

 mined by Sir James Ross. A long extent of Victoria 

 Land was also examined ; and, on the 16th of Septem- 

 ber, they once more happily entered the Coppermine, 

 after a boat voyage of more than sixteen hundred miles, 

 the longest ever performed in the Polar Sea 



