Note M — INTRODUCTION.

There is certainly no harm in making out all Instructions in the fullest manner, yet it must be allowed that those two parts might have been omitted with great propriety; for as neither Middleton, Ellis, nor Christopher were able to penetrate far enough up those inlets to discover any kind of herbage except moss and grass, much less woods, it was not likely those parts were so materially altered for the better since their times, as to make it worth my while to attempt a farther discovery of them; and especially as I had an opportunity, during my second Journey, of proving that the woods do not reach the sea-coast by some hundreds of miles in the parallel of Chesterfield's Inlet. And as the edge of the woods to the Northward always tends to the Westward, the distance must be greatly increased in the latitude of Wager Strait. Those parts have long since been visited by the Company's servants, and are within the known limits of their Charter; consequently require no other form of possession.