The White Whale of the Pacific 
 
Story by J.N. Reynolds, Esq.; Pictures by L.L. Balcom.
 
Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1932. First edition. Hardcover in a jacket. Large octavo. Chipping along the edges of the jacket, some soiling and small tears on the jacket, and darkening on the edges of the off white flaps. Front flap is price clipped. Three small pieces of tape used for repair on the inside panels. Bumping and scuffing along the edges of the boards. Minor soiling on the boards and the attached endpapers, but the text is extremely clean with only a couple of stains on the text block. 90 pages. Very good. 
 
The true story, originally published in The Knickerbocker Magazine in 1839 by a US navy officer and one of the key inspirations for Moby Dick, was rediscovered by a rare book collector almost a century later. Enshrined in a first edition treatment that a discovery of American literary history deserves, the publication is by Scribner's and the illustrations, intricate and glorious, are by Lowell Leroy Balcolm, including the wraparound cover image of the fluking tail and the ship, on the horizon and on the hunt for the albino monster. 
 
"Judge then of his trepidation, on beholding a creature, answering the wildest dreams of his fancy, and sufficiently formidable."