"6. In the event of wintering in the country, you will cultivate the most friendly relations with the natives, taking care, however, to guard against surprise. For this purpose you will repeatedly and constantly inculcate on your men, collectively and individually, the absolute necessity of mildness and firmness, of frankness and circumspection.
"7. If, in the event of your being unable to accomplish the whole of your task in one season, you see ground for doubting whether the resources of the country are competent to maintain the whole of your people, you will in that case send back a part of them to Churchill with one of the boats. For the remaining part of your men you cannot fail to find subsistence, animated as you and they are by a determination to fulfil your mission at the cost of danger, fatigue, and privation. Wherever the natives can live, I can have no fears with respect to you, more particularly as you will have the advantage of the Esquimaux, not merely in your actual supplies, but also in the means of recruiting and renewing them.
"8. During the winter you will pursue the various objects of the expedition by making excursions with a due regard, of course, to safety, on the snow or on the ice; and at the close of your second season, after having accomplished the whole of your task, you will return according to your own discretion, either by your original course or by Back's Great Fish River, keeping constantly in view, till you reach Churchill or Great Slave Lake, the general spirit of these your instructions.
"9. In conclusion, let me assure you that we look confidently to you for the solution of what may be deemed the final problem in the geography of the northern hemisphere. The eyes of all who take an interest in the subject are fixed on the Hudson's Bay Company; from us the world expects the final settlement of the question that has occupied the attention of our country for two hundred years; and your safe and triumphant return, which may God in His mercy grant, will, I trust, speedily compensate the Hudson's Bay Company for its repeated sacrifices and its protracted anxieties.
"John Rae, Esq. "Churchill, "Hudson's Bay."
The boats were loaded during the night, and at 6 A.M. were sent down to the old stone fort at the mouth of the river, where they were to wait for me a few hours. Besides an abundant supply of ammunition, guns, nets, twines, &c. for our own use, and various articles for presents and to barter with the Esquimaux, we had on board