The plan of campaign arranged by the Company differed materially from that originally propounded by Simpson. Simpson had proposed to travel eastward from the Castor and Pollux River and, after surveying Boothia Felix, to make his way, if possible, to Hudson’s Bay. Rae’s expedition, on the other hand, was to set out from Hudson’s Bay and to make its way up Rowe’s Welcome to Repulse Bay. There it was to cross the isthmus connecting the Melville Peninsula with the mainland, which, if the Eskimo stories were to be believed, was not more than three days’ journey, and, on reaching the sea on the other side, it was to push on till it had reached the point where either Ross or Dease and Simpson had left off. It must be remembered that at this time it was not known whether Boothia Felix was an island or a peninsula. If it proved to be the former, Rae was to make his way through the passage that divided it from the mainland and so into the Arctic Ocean. If the latter, he was to travel up its western shores until he reached some point that had been visited by the Rosses in the _Victory_. The journey was likely to prove adventurous, for there was no degree of certainty that the party would be able to obtain sufficient provisions to keep them from starving. Rae was only to take two small boats with him, so that it would be impossible for him to equip himself with any great quantity of food, and he would be obliged to depend on such poor supplies as the barren country had to offer. As, therefore, it seemed more than probable that the party would have to face the unpleasing alternatives of being either starved or frozen to death, he had some difficulty at first in obtaining volunteers. On June 1846, however, the preliminary difficulties having been overcome, Rae, with ten men, set out from York Factory. His boats, which were named the _North Pole_ and the _Magnet_, were strong, clinker-built craft, 22 feet long by 7 feet 6 inches broad. In addition to the ordinary equipment, he carried an oiled canvas canoe and one of Halkett’s air-boats which had never been tried on one of these expeditions before, and proved eminently satisfactory. The first part of the journey was necessarily slow, as in many cases the sea was still blocked with closely-packed ice, which needed careful negotiation. On July 24, however, the boats rounded Cape Hope and entered Repulse Bay, where the original exploration was to begin. On landing in Gibson Cove, they came upon a party of Eskimos, from whom they learnt the good news that the isthmus was not more than forty miles across, and that over a full thirty-five miles of this distance a chain of lakes afforded a waterway.