LIFE   OF   SB.   KANE.                           5
him to the Secretary of the Navy for the post of surgeon in the service ; and after passing the required examination so creditably that the disqualifying state of his health was overlooked by the Board of Examiners, he was appointed physician of the Chinese Embassy, which sailed in the frigate Brandywine, Commodore Parker, in May, 1843.
During the two years that he was absent upon this his first extended tour of travel, he made a complete circuit of the globe, sailing around the coast of South America, across the Pacific Ocean to Southern and Eastern Asia, and returning by the overland route through Europe, across the Atlantic to the United States. And that spirit of dauntless research which actuated him through life seems every where to have brought with it its own proper atmosphere of marvelous incident and peril.
While the vessel remained at Rio de Janeiro, after participating with the diplomatic corps in the coronation of the Emperor of Brazil, he visited the Eastern Andes for a geological survey of that region. At Bombay, where the legation awaited some months the arrival of its chief, Mr. Cushing, by the overland route, he seized the opportunity for similar inland journeys, exploring the caverned temples of Elephanta, traveling by palanquin to the less known ruins at Karli, passing over to Ceylon, and engaging, with some officers of the garrison, in the elephant hunt, and the other wild sports of the island. But it was at Luzon or Luconia, a Spanish possession in the China Sea, that this adventurous spirit, though under a scientific impulse, passed the limits of prudence in his far-famed exploration of the crater of Tael, a volcano on the Pacific coast of the island, in a region inhabited only by savages. Crossing over to the capital city of the island, during one of the long delays of Chinese diplomacy, he procured an escort of natives from the Archbishop of Manilla, (by means of letters from American prelates which he had secured before leaving home,) and in company with his friend Baron Loe, a relative of Metternich, penetrated across the country to the asphaltic lake in which the island volcano is situated. Both gentlemen at first descended together, until they reached a precipice overhanging the cavernous gulf of the crater, when the baron saw further progress to be impossible, but the doctor, in spite of the remonstrances of the whole party, insisted upon being lowered over the ledge by means of a rope made of bamboos, and held in the hands of the natives under the baron's direction, until he reached the bottom, two hundred feet below. Loosing himself from the cord, he forced his way downwards through the sulphurous vapors, over the hot