94 CRUISE OF the NEPTUNE 
1838-39 the eastern portion between Point Turnagain and the 
estuary of the Great Fish river was surveyed by the same 
intrepid explorers, without any loss of life to their party, and 
without other hardships than those incidental to travel in the 
Arctics. The boat voyages, by which these surveys were com- 
pleted, were the longest ever undertaken in arctic waters, and 
embraced sixty-two degrees of longitude between Point Barrow 
and Castor and Pollux river, the most eastern point of Simpson. 
While surveying the coast to the eastward, Simpson charted the 
south side of Victoria island and the south side of King 
William island. 
Unfortunately the advanced state of the season would not 
permit Simpson to connect the mouth of Great Fish river with 
Regent inlet, or with King William sea. This the Hudson's 
Bay Company resolved to complete, and in 1845 selected Dr. 
John Rae for the work. Dr. Rae sailed in boats from Churchill 
to repulse bay, where he passed the winter, supporting his 
party mainly by his own skill in hunting. The following spring 
he portaged his boats, by a number of lakes, across the Rae 
isthmus to the bottom of Committee bay, and surveyed the 
southern part of the Gulf of Boothia to Fury and Hecla strait 
on the east side, and to Lord Mayors bay on the west side, thus 
proving that land having the width of four degrees of longitude 
intervened between the Gulf of Boothia and the eastern bay of 
the sea explored by Dease and Simpson. Dr. Rae returned in 
his boats to York factory in the autumn of 1847, without losing 
a man of his party. 
In 1824 Captain Lyon, in the Griper, made an unsuccessful 
attempt to continue the work of Parry and himself in Fox 
channel. He left England on the 20th of June, rounded South- 
ampton island on the 30th of August, and stood up Roes 
Welcome, where excessively bad weather was met with. He 
reached Wager inlet on the 12th of September, and when riding 
out a gale lost his last two anchors, while the ship was rendered 
