Kane, ELISHA KENT,

Kane, ELISHA KENT, an Arctic explorer, was born in Philadelphia, United States, 3d February 1820, graduated in medicine at the university of Pennsylvania in 1842, and entered the navy as a surgeon, in which capacity he visited China, the East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and western Europe, subsequently the west coast of Africa and Mexico; in this last country he did duty on the coast survey. In May 1850 he commenced his career of Arctic discovery as surgeon, naturalist, and historian to the first Grinnell expedition. His account of it appeared at New York in 1854, entitled The United States Grinnell Expedition. In the spring of 1853 he again set out, this time as commander of an expedition; the results of it are fully detailed in his Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin (2 vols. Phila. 1856). He died at Havana, where he had gone for his health's sake, on February 16, 1857. See Life by W. Elder (Phila. 1858), and the briefer one by M. Jones (Lond. 1890).