8vo. With hand-colored folding route map & 4 tinted lithographed plates. Original publisher's blind-embossed blue cloth (recased preserving original endpapers). FIRST EDITION, recounting McClure's discovery of a Northwest Passage. In 1850 McClure took command of the Investigator, one of two ships sent to find the British explorer Sir John Franklin, missing in the North American Arctic since 1845. McClure entered the Bering Strait from the Pacific and found two entrances to the Northwest Passage around Banks Island, now part of the Northwest Territories of Canada. The Investigator became trapped in the ice of Mercy Bay just north of Banks Island, compelling McClure to abandon the ship; his party was rescued by two ships at nearby Melville Island. The rescue ships were in turn abandoned and McClure then continued north and east to meet Belcher's ships which had come in from the east, thus completing a transit of the Northwest Passage. The primary aim of the expedition was the rescue of Sir John Franklin in which it failed. However after four years and eight months M'Clure succeeded in completing the first north-west passage, from Alaska to the Atlantic. Abbey Travel 647; Hill (2004) 1122; Lada-Mocarski 145; Sabin 43073.