Account of Voyage of Discovery to North-east of Siberia 1806. This book has two parts: Volume I is titled "Account Of A Voyage Of Discovery To The North-East Of Siberia, The Frozen Ocean, And The North-East Sea", by Gawrila Sarytschew, Russian Imperial Major-General to the Expedition, translated from the Russian and embellished with engravings; the book was published in London by Richard Phillips at 6, Bridge-Street, Blackfriars and printed by J.G. Barnard, 57, Snow-Hill in 1806, and Volume II has the same title, author, publisher, and printer, but is dated 1807, and this is the first English translation of the book, first published in Russian in 1802. and it is one of the early fundamental books on the Aleutian Islands. The book is half bound, with gilt lettering on the spine, marbled boards, blank endpapers, a foldout engraving of the Tungusian Rein Deer breeders before the title page, a two-page Author's Preface, another fold-out engraving about a Jakutsian priest performing rituals to cure a sick man, and a third engraving of A Snow sledge drawn by dogs in the vicinity of Ochetzk and 70 pages of text in the first volume. The second volume follows the first one and has 80 pages of text. See Sabin 77126. Gawrila Sarytschew (1763 - 1831), also spelled Gavrill Sarytschev or Gavril Andreevich Sarychev, was a Russian navigator, hydrographer, surveyor, admiral and Honorable Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. He began his naval career as a naval cadet when he was just 8 and joined the Imperial Russian Navy in when he was 18; from 1785 to 1794, he took part in the expedition sponsored by Empress Catherine II to describe and map the coastline of the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan, many of the Aleutian Islands, and some islands in the Bering Strait and off the coast of Alaska. He was also in charge of a research expedition that led to an Atlas of the Northern Part of the Pacific Ocean in 1826. He became a Vice Admiral in 1808 and an Admiral in 1830, and he served briefly as a minister of the navy. He died from cholera during a major outbreak in 1831, and with his wide-ranging experiences, this book is one of the early fundamental books about the Aleutian Islands. The book is 8vo. and measures 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in. wide, the gilt has worn away on the spine, the front board is detached and the rest of the book has a tight binding, there's wear and slight loss on the spine, browning and wear on the first engraving, browning on the other two engravings and offset on the text from the engravings, and the pages are actually pretty clean otherwise, there's mild wear at the tips and creases on the last two endpapers at the rear, and a fabulous history of the Pacific and the area around the Aleutian Islands, as is. We've found only two copies listed online, and the better copy was in morocco and had the three engravings and two hand-colored aquatints, and it's going for $5000. #148 #1530