Voyages et découvertes faites par les Russes le long des côtes de la Mer Glaciale & sur l'Ocean Oriental, tant vers le Japon que vers l'Amérique: on y a joint L'histoire du fleuve Amur et des pays adjacens, depuis la conquête des Russes

The rare and sought-after French first edition. Translation from German by Dumas. The large folding map, placed at the end of volume II, is missing and has been replaced by a photocopy of the reduced map provided by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France on its Gallica website. It was drawn by French cartographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) and published by Abbé Prévost. This has been refolded to insert in place of the original map.
Contemporary full marbled calf bindings. Decorated smooth spines. Red morocco title and volume labels. One wormhole at the head of volume I. Evidence of rubbing to headcaps and corners. Lacking the half-title of the second volume. Handsome copy.
The first volume surveys all the voyages of discovery carried out in eastern Russia, Kamchatka, Siberia, and notably and especially that of Vitus Bering who in 1728 was the first to discover the northwest passage, leaving his name to the famous Bering Strait. The latter made a voyage by the same route to southern Alaska in 1741. The work relates numerous voyages, notably that of Simon Dejnev around the Chukchi Peninsula, that of Mikhail Gvozdev and Ivan Fedorov across the Bering Strait to Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, in 1732... The second volume deals with the history of the Amur River based on Witsen's work on northern and eastern Tartary. This history details the reports and relations between the Russians and Chinese, as well as Jesuit interventions.