CHAPTER VIII. 



DR. KANE'S SECOND ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



DR. KANE received the official order from the 

 Becretary of the Navy to conduct his second Arctic 

 expedition, in December, 1852. During several 

 months previous to this event he had been actively 

 engaged in planning a scheme and in elaborating 

 details which might be successfully carried out in 

 the further and more thorough exploration of the 

 Polar zone. He condensed the results of his re- 

 searches in an able lecture, which he delivered before 

 the American Geographical and Statistical Society 

 on the 14th of December, 1852, upon the "Access to 

 an Open Polar Sea in Connection with the Search after 

 Sir John Franklin and his Companions.'" This pro- 

 duction is one of marked ability. It displays great 

 learning, research, and acuteness, and evinces an 

 unusual degree of familiarity with geographical and 

 meteorological science, with natural history and 

 philosophy. He assumed the position that there 

 was probably an unexplored extension of the land- 

 masses of Greenland toward the extreme north; 



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