REISE UM DIE ERDE DURCH NORD-ASIEN UND DIE BEIDEN OCEANE IN DEN JAHREN 1828, 1829, UND 1830...IN EINER HISTORISCHEN UND EINER PHYSIKALISCHEN ABTHEILUNG DARGESTELLT UND MIT EINEM ATLAS BEGLEITET

by Erman, Adolph:

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Berlin. 1833-1848.. Five text volumes (including three folding handcolored maps, a color key to the maps, and four lithographed folding plates). Quarto geographical atlas of eleven lithographed views (two folding). Folio natural history atlas with vi,64pp. plus seventeen lithographed plates (two colored). Uniformly bound in three-quarter green morocco and green cloth, spines gilt. Occasional light tanning, some light scattered foxing. Natural history atlas with small ink stamp on both titlepages. Overall, a near fine set. In matching cloth slipcases. Text volumes untrimmed and unopened. One of the rarest and best - yet least-known - accounts of 19th- century exploration in northeastern Asia, Siberia, Russian America, and the northern Pacific Ocean. Erman's study is even less well-known, however, for it's significant and early scientific observations made in the Americas, including in Sitka and San Francisco in late 1829. The work is comprised of a three-volume account of Adolph Erman's travels in 1828- 30, a two- volume natural history text, an atlas of geographical views, and a natural history atlas. Erman contributed a great deal to the scientific and literary material regarding Russia and Russian America, and in 1844 he was awarded a medal from the Royal Geographical Society. His work was issued in parts over a span of fifteen years and is almost never found as a complete set. Erman, born in Berlin in 1806, was a scientist and traveller in the mold of Alexander von Humboldt. A physicist by training, in 1828 he undertook to travel around the world, departing with the company of Christopher Hantseen, which was to carry out magnetic measurements in Siberia. Erman travelled eastward across Russia, and when the Hantseen expedition turned back at Kyakhta, he proceeded onward at his own expense to Yakutsk and Okhotsk. He crossed the Sea of Okhotsk to Kamchatka and journeyed across the peninsula to the port of Petropavlovsk, where he met the ship of Leontii Hagemeister, who was supplying Russian colonies in Alaska. Erman travelled with Hagemeister to Sitka (where he apparently observed the sea otter pictured in the natural history atlas) and then on to San Francisco, Tahiti, the coast of South America, and then around the Horn to Europe. Several sources contend that Erman actually travelled back to Europe with the Russian expedition of Fedor Lutke (see Howgego, for example), but this appears to be incorrect, based on the chronology provided by Littke (see below). Erman's textual narrative ends with him in Kamchatka in October 1829. He spent several years after his return to Germany preparing the manuscript of his travels, which was published in parts through the 1830s and 1840s. The text volumes describing his journey contain detailed observations on zoology, botany, geography, and ethnology, as well as accounts of the peoples and places he encountered. Included are descriptions of a trip down the Ob River, the culture of the Ostyanks and Samoyeds, a discussion of the geology and geography of the northern Urals, Yakutsk, and Okhotsk areas, and brief Yakut and Tungus vocabularies. Erman travelled across Kamchatka in the summer and fall of 1829 and describes his wanderings over land and by river, as well as details of the geography, geology, botany, volcanoes, zoology, meteorology, and ethnology of the peninsula. He also includes a vocabulary of the Kamchadal dialect. The two-volume natural history text contains observations on latitude and longitude, as well as geomagnetic studies and magnetic observations made on land in Siberia, Kamchatka, Alaska, California, and South America, as well as on the Pacific Ocean. Apart from the wealth of scientific studies and readings Erman made in Russia, he performed the same tests and reported the same results for Sitka, Alaska in November 1829, San Francisco in December of that year, all across the Pacific Ocean, and in Rio de Janeiro in the spring of 1830. The natural history texts, therefore, contain an impressive amount of early, accurate scientific material about Alaska, California, and South America. The plates in the geographic atlas (each of which contains at least two and up to four views) are without captions, but are keyed to the places described in the text volumes. They chiefly depict scenes in Kamchatka, showing forests, waterways, mountains and volcanoes. The natural history atlas features attractive lithographs of birds (the majority of the images), a sea otter from Sitka, fish, insects, and plants. An important work of travel and science in Asia and Russia, with significant scientific material on California and Alaska. SABIN 22770. ARCTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY 4661. HOWGEGO E17. NERHOOD, TO RUSSIA AND RETURN 185 (ref). BM NATURAL HISTORY II:539. NISSEN (ZOOLOGY) 1305. Peter Littke, "Who was A. Erman?" http://www.irah.org/frameset/articles/Erman.pdf (an article on the website of the Initiative for Russian American History).

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