Volume I:
p. 49-50: the equipment which Richardson and John Rae landed in New York on April 10, 1848 included astronomical and meteorological instruments and: An ample supply of paper for botanical purposes, a quantity of paper, a small selection of books, a medicine chest, a canteen, a compendious cooking apparatus, and a few tines of pemican, completed our baggage, which weighed in the aggregate, above 4000 pounds.
p. 104-05, June 25th, at the Catholic mission chapel Isle à la Fort Crosse, in 1846 and directed by Monsieur La Flêche nd his colleague Monsieur Taschèa: They are both intelligent well-informed men, and devoted to task of instructing the Indians; but the revolution in France having cut off the funds the mission obtained from that country, its progress was likely to be impeded. They spoke appreciatively of the assistance and countenance they received from the gentlemen of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
p. 359-6: p. 213: The success of the Moravian Missionaries, in introducing Christianity and the arts of reading and writing among the population of the Labrador coast, is a strong inducement to attempt an extension of the same system of instruction to the well-fed multitudes that frequent the estuary of the Mackenzie.
p. 360-61: The comprehensiveness of the Eskimo language and its artificial structure are curious when we take into consideration the isolated position of the people, and the few objects that come under their observation. In 1825, I devoted the whole winter to the formation of an Eskimo vocabulary and grammar, with the aid of our very intelligent interpreter Augustus, who was a native of the shores of Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome, and having resided at Churchill, had acquired the power of expressing his meaning in very tolerable English. The book containing the results of his labours and mine was unfortunately stolen from me the following summer by the Eskimos of the estuary of the Mackenzie; but through the kindness of the Reverend Peter Latrobe, the philanthropic secretary of the Moravian Mission, I was provided for use on the present expedition with an excellent grammar, and a pretty full dictionary, formed by some of the industrious missionaries of the Labrador coast…. [Richardson believed that there was very little linguistic variation throughout the entire Inuit coastal littoral.]
Volume II:
p. 66: On the Sunday no labour was performed; the fishing party came in, and all were dressed in their best clothes. Prayers were said in the hall and a sermon read to all that understood English, and some of the Canadians, though they were Roman Catholics, usually attended. James and Thomas Hope, who were Cree Indians, having been educated at Norway House as Protestants, and taught to read and write, were regular attendants and James Hope’s eldest son, a boy about seven years or age, who had already begun to read the Scriptures, frequently recognized passages in the lessons that he had previously read.
p. 70-71 contains an interesting passage on the hunger and need for newspapers, after receipt of a mail packet at Fort Confidence in April 1849: [The “Galena Advertiser”] …being carried over the plains to Red River, by a party which set on the day following its publication, was sent to Great Bear Lake, and gave us the first intimation of a rebellion in Ireland. The other newspapers that we received at the same time were of very old date, but every paragraph of them, as well as of our letters, was read again with a keenness that can be understood only by those who have undergone similar privations of intelligence.
p. 89, with visiting Indians at Fort Confidence: Some of the new comers would frequently enter the sleeping apartments, and crouching down against the wall, remain in perfect quietness for an hour together, gazing at the books and other things exposed to view, and watching Mr. Rae and myself writing.
p. 386, a lengthy description of the vocabulary of the Chepewyan dialect and how it was established.