M WORKMEN AND HEROES prominence. In 1843 be was appointed physician to the United States embassy to China, under Caleb Cushing, who was charged with the negotiation of a treaty with that country. At the way ports and during the tedious intervals of the treaty negotiations, Kane lost no opportunity of travel and adventure. With Baron Loe be visited the Philippine Islands and the volcano of TaeL Not con- tent with the usual point of view, and despite the protestations of the native guides, he was lowered two hundred feet in the crater, whence he scrambled downward to the smoking sulphur lake and dipped his specimen bottles into its steaming waters In bis ascent the loose, heated ashes charred his boots and gave way under his feet, the sulphur vapors nearly asphyxiated him, he fell repeatedly, and was barely able to tie the bamboo rope around bim. Drawn up in an exhausted condition, and carried to a neighboring hermitage, he barely escaped violence at the hands of the offended natives, who considered his rash feat a sacrilege. Resigning his appointment with the legation, Kane established himself as a physician at Whampoa, on the Canton River, where illness shortly broke up his professional practice. Fortunately for his future fame he was unsuccessful in his application to the Spanish Government for permission to practise medicine at Manilla, and Kane returned to the United States by the way of Singapore, India, Egypt, and Europe, his journey marked by adventure and danger. In these, as in all other sea voyages, he suffered excessively from sea-sickness, which required all of his indomitable will to endure with equanimity. In 1 846 he was commissioned assistant surgeon in the United States Navy; his first sea duty took him to the west coast of Africa, where coast fever invalided him within ten months. His desire for active service was so great that before his health was re-established he obtained orders from the Secretary of the Navy to proceed to headquarters of the army, then in the City of Mexico, for duty in connection with the collection of data relative to field hospitals and surgical statis- tics. Here his activity and daring resulted in his being wounded in a guerilla skirmish. Assigned temporarily to a surveying vessel, circumstances soon determined Kane's career and gave full scope to his enthusiastic energies, and insured nis future fame. The appeals of Lady Franklin, the recommendations of President Taylor, and the generosity of Henry Grinnell, had culminated in the organization of a search expedition for Franklin in the Arctic regions. It was provided that the vessels should be manned by volunteers from the Navy, and among those of- fering their services for this mission of humanity none was more importunate than Kane. Persistent efforts brought him orders for this fateful voyage while bathing in the tepid waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and ten days later he sailed from New York for the icy wastes of the North as surgeon of De Haven's flag- ship, the Advance. This search, known in Arctic .history as the First Grinnell Expedition, was made under a joint resolution of the Congress of the United States, dated May 2, 1850, "to accept and attach to the Navy two vessels of- fered by Henry Grinnell, Esq., to be sent to the Arctic seas in search of Sir john
