It is about an enormous ship built by the Yanks, that has a great city on it, and is navigated about the world, playing ducks and drakes with geography and the balance of political power in the South Seas, until finally the savages of the New Hebrides and the forces of Nature rise up and annihilate it. [from a contemporary review cited in T&M]

Sampson Low's "New and Cheaper Editions" always came out a few years after their first editions -- same exact text, same crisp and sharp illustrations, similar pictorial bindings, but a slightly smaller format and without gilt page edges. Today they are highly collectible, especially for the scarcer Sampson Low titles (such as this one) for which fine copies of the first edition have become prohibitively expensive. Near-fine (endpapers slightly cracked). Taves & Michaluk V043; Myers 23.