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[ARCTIC: POLAR URALS] Puteshestviya P.I. Krusensterna k Severnomu Uralu v 1874-1876 godakh dlya issledovaniya vodyanogo soobshcheniya mezhdu pritokami Pechory i Obi [i.e. Travels of P.I. Krusenstern to the Northern Urals in 1874-1876, for the Survey of Communication by Water between the Tributaries of the Pechora and Ob Rivers]

Krusenstern, P.I.

St. Petersburg: ‘‘Slavyanskaya Pechatnya’’, 1879. Item #316

[4], 172, [1] pp. Large octavo. With a large folding lithographed map at rear. Original publisher’s printed wrappers. Very minor tears of extremities, otherwise a very good uncut copy in its original state.

First and only edition. Very rare. An account of the last travel to the Polar Ural Mountains by Pavel Ivanovich Krusenstern (1809-1881), a noted Russian Arctic explorer, and a son of the first Russian circumnavigator Ivan Krusenstern (1770-1846). Pavel Krusenstern graduated from the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo and took part in the circumnavigation of sloop ‘‘Senyavin’’ under command of Friedrich Luetke in 1826-29. During the period between 1843 and 1876 he went on nine voyages to the Polar Ural Mountains, the Pechora River region and the coast of the Barents Sea in the modern-day Komi Republic and Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Russia, which resulted in the first exact map of the region based on astronomical observations, and thorough geological and topographical survey of the area. For the account of the first expedition to the Pechora River in 1843 Krusenstern and his companion, geologist Alexander von Keyserling (1815-1891) were awarded the Demidov prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the 1860s Krusenstern was a shareholder of the ‘‘Pechora Company’’ formed for the logging and shipping of larch timber from the Polar Urals to the European Russia and Western Europe.

His last expedition to the Polar Ural Mountains in 1874-76 aimed to ascertain the water way between the Pechora and Ob Rivers, which would enable the delivery of various goods from Siberia to the European Russia. Krusenstern followed the Usa River and its right tributary Bolshaya Usa (Sart-Yu), up to the Izyahoy stream near the Sartpe Mountain in the Polar Urals which serves as the water divide between the basins of Pechora and Ob Rivers, and the border between Europe and Asia. He was the first European to visit the water divide, and carried out a topographical survey of the nearby Khadata-Yugan-Lor Lakes which act as a source of the Khadata River from the Ob River system (incorrectly he stated that the lakes were the source of the Longotyegan River, another tributary of the Ob). Krusenstern suggested that construction of the channel between the stream and the lakes would enable water communication between the Pechora and Ob Rivers. His account includes the detailed description of the routes of his two expeditions (1874 and 1876), and over a hundred pages with results of astronomical observations (latitudes and longitudes, levelling etc.). The map compiled by the expedition surveyor gives a detailed picture of the water divide between the Izyahoy stream and the Khadata-Yugan-Lor Lakes.

Worldcat locates only one paper copy (University of Illinois at Urbana).

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