Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea, in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822, &1823;

cxxxviii413 pages with tables and large folding map. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in contemporary calf with red and black spine labels lettered in gilt, marbled edges. Edited by Major Edward Sabine. (Arctic Bibliography 18994; Howes E-151) First English edition second edition overall, preceded by the first edition in 1839 in German.

Baron Ferdinand Friedrich Georg Ludwig von Wrangel was a Baltic German explorer and officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, Honorable Member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a founder of the Russian Geographic Society. He is best known as chief manager of the Russian-American Company, in fact governor of the Russian settlements in present-day Alaska.

He was appointed in 1820 to command the Kolymskaya expedition to explore the Russian polar seas. Sailing from St. Petersburg, he arrived at Nizhnekolymsk on 2 November 1820, and early in 1821 journeyed to Cape Shelagskiy on sledges drawn by dogs. He sailed afterward up Kolyma River, advancing about 125 miles into the interior, through territory inhabited by the Yakuts. On 10 March 1822, he resumed his journey northward, and traveled 46 days on the ice, reaching 72° 2' north latitude. He left Nizhnekolymsk on 1 November 1823, and returned to St. Petersburg on 15 August 1824.

He established that north of the Kolyma River and Cape Shelagsky there was an open sea, not dry land, as people thought. Together with Fyodor Matyushkin and P. Kuzmin, Wrangel described the Siberian coastline from the Indigirka River to the Kolyuchinskaya Bay in the Chukchi Sea. His expedition made a valuable research in glaciology, geomagnetics, and climatology and also collected data about natural resources and native population of that remote area. (Wikipedia)

Condition: Stamp-signed by Riviere to title, joints repaired, corners slightly bumped, slight wear to extremities, a few pencil marks. Some slight offsetting from engraved folding map. Provenance: Collector's bookplate else very good.