72 
FIRST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
and, if during your stay at such a place, a safe opportunity should 
occur of sending these papers to England, you should send du¬ 
plicates by that conveyance. 
If the circumstances of your passage should be such, as to en¬ 
courage your attempting to return by the same course, you may 
winter at the Sandwich Islands, New Albion, or any other proper 
place, and early in the next spring may proceed direct for Beh¬ 
ring’s Strait, and use your endeavours to repass the same; and 
should you succeed in this attempt, you are to proceed, if possible 
to the eastward, keeping in sight and approaching the coast of 
America, whenever the position of the ice will permit you so 
to do, in order that you may be enabled to ascertain the latitudes 
and longitudes, of some of the most remarkable headlands or 
inlets that may occur, taking every possible precaution, however 
against being beset by the ice, and thus compelled to winter on 
that coast. 
Before however you determine on returning by the same way, you 
will maturely consider and weigh the prudence of making such 
an attempt. If your original passage should be made with faci¬ 
lity, and you see reason to believe that your success was not 
owing to circumstances merely accidental or temporary, and that 
there is a probability that you may be able also to accomplish 
the passage back, it would undoubtedly be of great importance 
that you should endeavour to make it; but if on the other hand, 
it shall have been attended with circumstances of danger or diffi¬ 
culty, so great as to persuade you that the attempt to return 
would risk the safety of the ships, and the lives of the crews; in 
this case, you are to abandon all thoughts of returning by the 
northern passage, and are to make the best of your way home¬ 
wards by Cape Horn. 
Previously to your leaving England, or at any rate before 
your departure from Shetland, you are to fix with Capt. Buchan, 
to whom the other expedition is intrusted, upon a rendezvous in 
the Pacific, and if you should be joined by the Dorothea and Trent, 
or either of them, you are to take them under your command, 
and having detached one ship with a copy of all your papery 
and a complete set of despatches respecting your proceedings tj 
