A.L. Burt Company publishers; hardbound with red boards and gilt lettering on spine, "The Home Library", no copywright date in book, only dated by author as "Boston, July, 1840" after Preface; book in relative good condition with front cover a little loose.  Some minor foxing of pages; no dust jacket.
 
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On August 14, 1834, nineteen-year-old Richard Henry Dana Jr. made his way to Boston Harbor in search of a two-masted brig called the Pilgrim. An archetypal Brahmin—dad was a poet and essayist, granddad had been chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, great-granddad was one of the original Sons of Liberty—Dana had been a promising student at Harvard College until measles inflamed his corneas and he could no longer read without pain. He resolved to effect a “cure, if possible, by an entire change of life.” Discarding the dress coat and silk cap of an undergraduate, he donned the duck trousers and tarpaulin hat of a sailor...