xii SAILING ORDEliS. 



Eskimo drivers, &c, and then pass up to Smith Sound in the 

 prosecution of the enterprise, and it will be a question for you to 

 consider whether you would leave a depot of provisions and a boat 

 at the Carey Islands on passing. 



5. Both shores in the vicinity of Capes Isabella and Alexander 

 should be examined in order to select a suitable position for the 

 depot or relief ship which will, in the event of the expedition re- 

 maining in the Arctic regions, be despatched in 1877 ; but as such 

 a position cannot be absolutely determined on beforehand, and it 

 is necessary to decide where information will be found by any ship 

 which may be subsequently sent out from England, Lyttelton 

 Island, in the opinion of competent authorities, meets all the 

 requirements of a fixed point of rendezvous. Here a conspicuous 

 cairn should be erected ; one record placed in the cairn, another 

 laid beside it on the north side, and a third buried twenty feet due 

 north of it. These records should contain proceedings of the 

 voyage and such information as may be necessary for the com- 

 mander of the ship to be despatched in 1877. 



6. The ships should then proceed up Smith Sound with all 

 speed, so long as its navigation is not seriously obstructed by ice, 

 a careful scrutiny being made of its shores for places of security 

 for the ships, stopping only to erect cairns on such conspicuous 

 points as may be conveniently landed on. Similar information 

 should be placed at these cairns, and after the same method as 

 described for the cairn on Lyttelton Island. It is, moreover, 

 necessary to be borne in mind that these records of the progress 

 of the expedition and of any change of plans you may have found 

 necessary to make, form an important feature in these instructions. 



7. It is desirable that these cairns should not be more than 

 sixty miles apart. By way of illustration, may be named Capes 

 Frazer, Back, and Beechey on the western shore, and Capes Jack- 

 son and Bryan on the eastern shore ; to these prominent headlands 

 the attention of any searching party would naturally be directed. 

 A small depot of provisions and a boat might also be advan- 

 tageously left at one or more of these points, to serve either for 

 exploring parties or to aid in the event of an abandonment of the 

 ships. Timely endeavours should be made to secure anchorage 

 suitable for winter quarters, and every precaution during that 

 rigorous season, which your former experience, as well as that of 

 other Arctic voyagers, may suggest, is to be taken, for the health 



