First US edition in VG condition, full brown original cloth with gilt lettering and design to front cover, slight shelfwear, large folding map perfect, some foxing, not affecting illustrations, 448 pages plus 4 pages of ads. original title: Travels in the regions of the Upper and Lower Amoor and the Russian acquisitions on the confines of India and China. With adventures among the mountain Kirghis; and the Manjours, Manyargs, Toungouz, Touzemtz, Goldi, and Gelyaks: the hunting and pastoral Tribes. , architect and traveller, Thomas Witlam Atkinson (1799 - 1861) and his wife Lucy, spent seven years travelling in Siberia and Central Asia during the period 1847 - 53. Their son Alatau was born during their travels at the beginning of November in 1848 in what is today Eastern Kazakhstan. Bearing in mind the conditions they were living in and the extreme cold, it is a miracle that he survived! Thomas Atkinson's first book "Oriental and Western Siberia: A Narrative of Seven Years' Explorations and Adventures in Siberia, Mongolia, The Kirghis Steppes, Chinese Tartary, and Part of Central Asia" was first published in London and New York in 1858. In the preface to this, his second book describing the travels he (and his wife and son who are invisible in his writing) gives more detail on the natural history and resources of this vast region than he gave in "Oriental and Western Siberia.". He did not confine himself to seeking only to satisfy the scientists among his readership but also discusses the possibility of British commerce in the region. "Our commerce, prodigious as are its operations, is, its is well known, capable of infinite expansion, and I have laid open a field of almost incalculable extent, where enterprise, skill, and industry are sure to find a profitable investment." He also addresses the great interest in Britain in Russian ambitions for the region: "For those of my compatriots who have been alarmed by the approaches of Russia to our Indian Empire, I have faithfully stated every step that has recently been made in this direction, and afforded them an opportunity of learning her present position on the north of the Himalaya. Her existing relations with China, now that we are engaged in a war with its government, will doubtless give increased interest to the facts I have been enabled to collect respecting the several advances she has skillfully made into Chinese territory, and the consequent extraordinary development of her own." (From the preface).
