THE ‘HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 105 
Obituary. 
THE LATE DR. JOHN RAE, LL.D., F. R. S., F. R. G. S. 
Dr. Rae was First Vice-President of our Association when it 
was established in 1837, and in the following year he was President. 
His name has been in the list of our honorary members for several 
years, and we have always considered it a great honor to have had 
such a famous man connected with our Association in the foregoing 
capacities. 
Born in the year 1813, in the Orkney Islands, in the north of 
Scotland, he was therefore in his 80th year at his death, which took 
place on the 13th of July, 1894, in London, England. 
He studied medicine at Edinburgh, taking his degree in 1833, 
and entered the service of the Hudson Bay Company in the same 
year. In 1846 he set out on his first voyage on behalf of the same 
Company, and so successfully was this accomplished that he was 
offered and accepted the place of second in command of the expe- 
dition under Sir John Richardson, to search for Franklin. ‘This 
expedition was unsuccessful, but in 1849 Dr. Rae was appointed 
to command another search party to the Arctic coast. In order 
to utilize the time before navigation opened, he, accompanied 
by two men, made a journey along the shores of Wollaston Land, 
traversing over 1100 miles, he himself dragging the sledge. The 
average day’s journey was about 25 miles, and the whole shore was 
rainutely examined, including Victoria Strait, in which, as it after- 
wards appeared, Franklin’s ships had been abandoned. Continuing 
the exploration, he and his party, with the aid of snow-shoes, 
marched continuously at the rate of 27 miles a day to Fort Garry, 
now the city of Winnipeg. In eight months they had travelled 
5380 miles, 700 miles of which was newly discovered territory. For 
this he got the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. 
Again, in 1853, he took command of an expedition organized by 
