Octavo, 464, 467pages. Decorative embossed cloth boards with vignette at front board, gilt stamping, frontispiece, two title pages each volume, profusely illustrated with 300 steel & wood engravings, full page & vignettes, maps/fold-out. Pages clean, a few tissue guards with small amt foxing & some foxing on map, former owner's name on front free endpapers and title page, light soiling to boards, edgewear, corners bumped, Vol I front outside hinge mended professionally and also small abrasion to cloth upper spine mended, Vol II has horizontal closed tear to cloth under title at spine (mended), and two 1-1/2" crack to cloth at back spine verticle (mended), abrasion to cloth crown/heel of spine.
According to William Elder's biography of Kane in 1859 an important backer of Kane felt the explorer should be honored by the naming of a geographical region for him. He convinced the publisher to engrave "Kane's Sea" across an unnamed expanse of the ocean on the folding map in volume one. A few copies had been released during the first month of publication prior to this addition which appeared in all subsequent copies. The map in this set is of the first state without this addition. Doctor Kane was the ship's surgeon on the First Grinnell Expedition of 1850 and upon that mission's unsuccessful return he immediately set out in command of the Second. That mission was, financed by Grinnell, also a failure in that no trace of the lost Franklin Party was found.