On the arrival of spring Rae resumed his journey, starting on April 5th. He had two sledges, each drawn by four dogs and six men. A snow house was built each night. The food was pemmican, reindeer tongues, flour, tea, chocolate, and sugar. Rae carried the books and instruments himself, a weight of 35 lb. The rations were 1½ lb. of pemmican daily for each man and ⅓ lb. of flour, but they obtained a seal from the Eskimo, and had seal meat for eight days. They explored the west side of the Gulf of Akuli as far as Lord Mayor’s Bay of Ross and returned May 5th, having proved that there is no outlet to the westward as was expected. Rae’s next journey was for 28 days, from May 13th to June 9th, to explore the west side of Melville Peninsula as far as the entrance to Fury and Hecla Strait. The party, travelling over soft snow, only got within ten miles of the Strait. Rae says that he traced 655 miles of new coast. He certainly settled the question of any sea from Fury and Hecla Strait to Cape Turnagain, and proved that Boothia was a peninsula, not an island. The Gulf of Akuli is the termination of Prince Regent’s Inlet. In 1818, as we have seen, nothing was known of the northern coast of America but the mouths of the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers. In 1848 the whole coast had been mapped, from the Icy Cape of Cook to the Fury and Hecla Strait of Parry, a distance of 1000 miles. Franklin, Richardson, Back, Dease, Simpson, and Rae were the discoverers, and their achievements entailed deeds of heroism such as have never been surpassed, and seldom equalled, in the whole history of discovery. CHAPTER XXV JOHN ROSS, JAMES ROSS, AND THE NORTH MAGNETIC POLE