the most appropriate place in which to
introduce it. From the nature of the transactions, it is necessary to
give the relation in the words of the authorised report:--

"In July, 1846, the Company dispatched an expedition of thirteen
persons, under the command of Doctor John Rae, from Fort Churchill, in
Hudson's Bay, for the purpose of surveying the unexplored portion of the
Arctic coast, at the north-eastern point of the American continent. The
expedition, which has just returned, has traced the coast all along from
the Lord Mayor's Bay, of Sir John Ross, to within a few miles of the
Straits of the Fury and Hecla, proving thereby the correctness of Sir
John Ross's statement that Boothia Felix is a peninsula. From Doctor
Rae's Report to the Company the following interesting details are
gathered:--Having divided his men into watches, the doctor started
from Churchill on the 5th of July, 1846, and reached the most southerly
opening of Wager River on the 22nd, where they were detained all day by
immense quantities of heavy ice driving in with the flood and out again
with the ebb tide, which ran at the rate of seven or eight miles an
hour, forcing up the ice and grinding it against the rocks, causing
a noise resembling thunder. On the 24th the party succeeded in making
Repulse Bay, and cast anchor within eight miles of the head of the bay
under shelter of a small island. Here Doctor Rae found some Esquimaux
Indians, with whom he quickly established friendly relations, and from
a chart drawn by one of the party he inferred that the Arctic Sea (named
Akhoolee) to the west of Melville Peninsula was not more than forty
miles distant, in a N.N.W. direction, and that about thirty-five miles
of the distance was occupied by deep lakes; so that they would have only
five miles of land to drag their boat over--a mode of proceeding he had
decided upon even had the distance been much greater, in preference
to going round by the Fury and Hecla Strait. Here he established a
wintering party, and having unloaded the boats, and placed one of them,
with the greater part of her cargo, in security, the other was hauled
three miles up a rapid and narrow river which flowed from one of the
lakes they were to pass through. This work occupied them the whole of
the 26th, as the current was very strong, and the channel so full of
large boulder stones, that the men were frequently up to the waist
in ice-cold water whilst lifting or launching the boat o