8vo. With color-printed folding map (a few tears repaired verso). Original publisher's pictorial maroon cloth (recased preserving original endpapers). Provenance: Sir Edward Sabine (presentation inscription); C. G. Church (stamp). FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO SIR EDWARD SABINE on the half-title: "To Sir Edward Sabine from the Author, July 22, 1876". A scarce work whose second volume, referred to in the Preface, was never published. "Contains a history of Dutch voyages in the Greenland and Barents Seas; of early whaling and the commonly held 19th century views on the open polar sea, routes to the Pole, and oceanic current systems; chronological table of voyages west and east of the West of Spitsbergen, 860-1876" (Arctic Bibliography 18520).