On the following morning the ladies of the tribe paid Rae a state visit. “They were all tattooed on the face,” he writes, “the form on each being nearly the same, viz. a number of curved lines drawn from between the eyebrows up over the forehead, two lines across the cheek from near the nose towards the ear, and a number of diverging curved lines from the lower lip towards the chin and lower jaw. Their hands and arms were much tattooed from the tip of the finger to the shoulder. Their hair was collected in two large bunches, one on each side of the head, and, a piece of stick about ten inches long and half an inch thick being placed among it, a strip of different-coloured deer-skin is wound round it in a spiral form, producing far from an unpleasing effect. They all had ivory combs of their own manufacture, and deer-skin clothes with the hair outwards; the only difference between their dresses and those of the men being that the coats of the former had much larger hoods (which are used for carrying children), in having a flap before as well as behind, and also in the greater capacity of their boots, which come high above the knee, and are kept up by being fastened to the girdle.” Curiously enough, one of these women had visited the _Fury_ and _Hecla_ twenty-three years before, and among her most prized possessions were some beads which Parry had given her. With immense labour the boats were dragged up the stream which connects Repulse Bay with the chain of lakes, and the serious work of the expedition began. Rae found that he had not been misled by the stories of the Eskimos, and by August 1 he was on the shores of Committee Bay, the southernmost arm of Prince Regent Inlet. His first hope was that he would be able to sail round the bay and survey its shores. Ice and fog, however, rendered this quite impossible, so he decided, as there seemed to be no chance of the ice breaking up that season, to turn back to Repulse Bay and to hope for better luck in the following summer.