For the purposes of this volume the most important of these expeditions, because the most productive of data regarding the natural resources of the region under review, was that dispatched overland from Athabaska district via Mackenzie river in 1848 and 1849. From the rapids of Slave river, Doctor John Richardson and Doctor Rae (both subsequently knighted) pushed on with all possible speed, leaving the heavier boats to follow with the winter supplies, and skirted the Arctic coast eastward to the mouth of the Coppermine river. Thence they travelled overland to the mouth of the Dease river on Great Bear lake. Near this point, on the site of Fort Confidence, established by Dease and Simpson, Rae, whose detachment had ascended Great Bear river and crossed Great Bear lake for this purpose, had erected houses, and here the entire party passed the winter of 1848-49. As early in the spring of 1849 as the season allowed, the party divided on Arctic sea, and Richardson returned to England, while Rae made an attempt to reach Wollaston land. Failing in this, he returned to Fort Confidence, and ascended the Mackenzie to Fort Simpson. In the summer of 1854, under the auspices of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Rae made a journey of exploration along the southern coasts of Wollaston and Victoria lands, still searching for the Franklin expedition. In 1853, when no trace of Franklin could be found elsewhere, Rae again turned his steps in the direction of Gulf of Boothia. First he sought a short cut to the south of Backs river by Chesterfield inlet and Quoich river, which he ascended in a boat for two and a half degrees of latitude (up to 66° north), but finding the river full of rapids and impracticable for his purpose, he returned and hastened north to Repulse bay. The reports of these expeditions contain several references to the natural resources of the country, but they are not so valuable as would have been the case had time been less a consideration, or had the investigation of mineral deposits and other natural wealth of the country been the chief objective. Some information as to the resources of the north country was obtained by the British Parliamentary Committee of 1857 already referred to (See p. 3), but most of the evidence had reference to the southern part of Hudson’s Bay Company’s territory now comprised within the settled parts of the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARY INVESTIGATIONS.