﻿28 INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE ADMIRALTY. 1848. 



ready for the next years voyage ; and you will instruct 

 Mr. Bell to send two hunters to the banks of the river 

 to provide food for the party on the route to Fort Con- 

 fidence, and thus spare you any further consumption of 

 the peraican reserved for the following summer. 



" As it may happen, however, from your late arrival on 

 the coast, or subsequent unexpected detentions, that you 

 cannot with safety attempt to reach the Coppermine, you 

 have our full permission in such a case to return to Fort 

 Good Hope, on the Mackenzie, there to deposit two of 

 the boats, with all the sea stores, and to proceed with the 

 other two boats, and the whole of the crews, to winter 

 quarters on Great Bear Lake. 



" And you have also our permission to deviate from the 

 line of route along the coast, should you receive accounts 

 from the Eskimos, which may appear credible, of the 

 crews of the ' Erebus ' and ' Terror,' or some part of 

 them, being in some other direction. 



*• For the purpose of more widely extending your 

 search, you are at liberty to leave Mr. Rae and a party of 

 volunteers to winter on the coast, if, by the establishment 

 of a sufficient fishery, or by killing a number of deer or 

 musk oxen, you may be able to lay up provisions enough 

 for them until you can rejoin them next summer. 



" As you have been informed by Captain Sir James 

 Ross, of Her Majesty's ship ' Enterprize,' who is about 

 to be employed on a similar search in another direction, 

 of the probable directions in which the parties he will 

 send out towards the continent will travel, you are to 

 leave a deposit of pemican for their use at the following 

 points — namely, Point Separation, Cape Bathurst, Cape 

 Parry, and Cape Krusenstern ; and as Sir James Ross is 

 desirous that some pemican should be stored at Fort Good 



