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 



