FROM RUSSIA TO MONGOLIA AND CHINA
TIMKOVSKII, Egor Fedorovich.
Travels of the Russian mission through Mongolia to China, and residence in Peking, in the years 1820-1821 … With corrections and notes by Julius von Klaproth …
London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1827.
2 vols, 8vo, pp. ix, [1 (blank)], 468, with engraved frontispiece and folding map at end; iv, 496, with folding frontispiece ‘Plan of Peking’; some foxing, occasional marks, closed tear to folding map (without loss) neatly repaired; a good uncut copy in original boards, rebacked, new printed spine labels; some wear to corners and edges, and marks to covers, hinges repaired; bookplate in vol. 2 of Duncan Main.
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Travels of the Russian mission through Mongolia to China, and residence in Peking, in the years 1820-1821 … With corrections and notes by Julius von Klaproth …
First edition in English (first Russian 1824) of this important description of Mongolia and China by the Russian traveller and diplomat Egor Timkovskii (1790–1875), translated by Hannibal Evans Lloyd (1771–1847).
Timkovskii accompanied a Russian Orthodox mission to Beijing and back in 1820 and 1821, writing here in conclusion that his journey was ‘one of the most troublesome, fatiguing, and even dangerous to health, that it is possible to make by land’. Following an opening passage on the Russian mission in Beijing, Timkovskii relates his experiences of Ulaanbaatar (Ourga), the Gobi Desert, Zhangjiakou (Kalgan), the Chinese capital, Turkestan, and Tibet. There is much on Beijing e.g. customs and dress, laws, the state of Christianity, the army, the cold etc., and the second volume includes a lengthy ‘Historical, geographical, and ethnographical essay on Mongolia’.
The frontispiece to vol. 1 depicts a Mongolian nobleman smoking a pipe on the back of a camel. Timkovskii’s work proved popular, being translated into German, Dutch, French, and Polish.
Cordier, Sinica 2474; Lust 550.
