(WITSEN, NICOLAUS) - AMUR RIVER - FLEUVE AMOUR.

L'Histoire du Fleuve Amur et des Pays adjacens, depuis la Conquête des Russes ; avec la Nouvelle Carte qui présente ces Découvertes & le Cours de l'Amur, dressée sur des Mémoires authentiques, publiée par l'Académie des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, & corrigée en dernier Lieu. Ouvrages traduits de l'Allemand de Mr. G.P. Muller, par C.G.F. Dumas.

Amsterdam, Marc-Michel Rey, 1766. Small 8vo. Contemp. full mottled calf. Richly gilt spine. IV,207,(23) pp. Without the map. Clean, faint marginal brownspots.

The contemt of this volume (which is volume II of Gerhard F. Müller's. "Voyages et Découvertes faites par les Russes le long des Côtes de la Mer glaciale & sur l'Océan oriental...) is wholly devoted to the description of the Amur River and its borderlines as extracted and translated from Nicolaus Witsen's work "Sur la Tartarie Septentrionale & Orientale" (Noord en Oost Tartarye, Ofte Bondig Ontwerp Van eenig dier Landen en Volken..., Amsterdam 1692).
"In the nineteenth century, Russian historians and ethnographers discovered that Witsen had used many Russian sources that had since been lost, and they praised Noord en Oost Tartarye ‘as the most remarkable book about Asiatic Russia ever written by a foreigner.’ During the Soviet period, Witsen was seen as scholar who had ‘opened up a new era in the study of Siberia.’ Nowadays, he is respectfully mentioned on many local Russian websites as the first to have reported on their town, province, nationality or language."(huygens.knaw.n.).

Order-nr.: 56940