OFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS. 



xxiii 



point to your own discretion, on a view of all the different circum- 

 stances which may exist at the time when your determination is to be 

 formed. 



Should you be so successful as to find a practicable passage from the 

 one sea to the other, you are to make the best of your way in accom- 

 plishing that object without stopping to examine the north coast of 

 America, or for any other object not of imperious importance ; but 

 when the ships are checked in their progress by ice, or other una- 

 voidable circumstances, you will take every opportunity of examining 

 the coasts you may be near, and making all useful observations relating 

 thereto. 



Should you happily reach the Pacific you are to proceed to Kams- 

 chatka, (if you think you can do so without risk of being shut up by 

 the ice on that coast,) for the purpose of delivering to the Russian 

 Governor duplicates of the journals and other documents which the 

 passage may have supplied, with a request that they may be forwarded 

 over land to St. Petersburg!!, to be conveyed from thence to London. 



From Kamschatka you will proceed to the Sandwich Islands or 

 Canton, or such other place as you may think proper, to refit the 

 ships and refresh the crews ; and if during your stay at such place a 

 safe opportunity should occur of sending papers to England, you 

 should send duplicates by such conveyance. And after having refitted 

 and refreshed, you are to lose no time in returning to England by such 

 route as you may deem most convenient. 



It may happen that your progress along the north coast of the 

 American Continent may be so slow as to render it desirable that, if 

 you should not be able to accomplish your passage into the Pacific 

 earlier than the autumn of 1824, you should be assured of finding a 



