I have here for sale a 2-volume set entitled ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS IN THE YEARS 1853, 54, 55 The Second Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, Vols I and II by Elisha Kent Kane. It is a first edition published by Childs and Petersen, Philadelphia in 1856. There are over 300 illustrations throughout the two volumes, 21 of which are full page plates. There is a map at the start of Vol II showing the American Arctic Expedition and a fold-out table at the back showing the Mean Monthly Isothermal Lines of Baffin Bay.

Kane organized and headed the Second Grinnell expedition on the USS Advance which sailed from New York on May 31, 1853. The expedition stopped in Fiskenaesset, Greenland to pick up the Inuit hunter, Hans Hendrik and at Upernavik, Greenland to pick up the sled driver and interpreter Johan Carl Christian Petersen and wintered in Rensselaer Bay. Though suffering from scurvy, and at times near death, he pushed on and charted the coasts of Smith Sound and the Kane Basin, penetrating farther north than any other explorer had done up to that time. At Cape Constitution he discovered the ice-free Kennedy Channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, later followed by Isaac Israel Hayes, Charles Francis Hall, Adolphus Greely, and Robert E. Peary in turn as they drove toward the North Pole. Kane finally abandoned the icebound brig Advance on May 20, 1855, and made an 83-day march to Upernavik on the west coast of Greenland. The party, carrying the invalids, lost only one man. Kane and his men were saved by a sailing ship. Kane returned to New York on October 11, 1855, and the following year published his two-volume Arctic Explorations.

Rebound in dark brown cloth hardboards with the original spine cloth reattached over the top. This original cloth has the gilt title lettering. Boards in fine/mint condition. New endpapers with the bookplate of Clinton E Geiser, the Anglo-Swiss financier, to the front ones. A few oxidization spots to the plates, all text pages clean. Vol I - 464 pages plus pages 3-4 of Reviewers comments, Vol II - 467 pages. 23 cm x 15 cm.