Chappe d’Auteroche, abbé (1728-1769). Voyage en Sibérie. Paris: Debure, pere, 1768. 3 vols. Ellis Aves E36

Chappe d’Auteroche, abbé (1728-1769). Voyage en Sibérie. Paris: Debure, pere, 1768. 3 vols. Ellis Aves E36

"Leave Northern Siberia to the Bears," he said... Among the westerners who achieved scientific immortality for their courageous forays into the frozen parts of Russia, was a Frenchman with equal passion for both religion and science: priest and astronomer Abbé Chappe d'Auteroche. Sent out to Tobol'sk by Louis XV to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, he was later sent on a similar mission to observe Venus in Baja California, where he died of yellow fever. This wonderful three volume travelogue is filled with detailed descriptions of climate, flora, fauna, mineralogy, and the mining trade, as well as manners and customs of the inhabitants, and an astute geopolitical assessment of the areas the abbé was in, all accurately represented in engravings. Included is Chappe's translation of Krashenninikov's text on Kamtchatka and thus is one of the earliest printed accounts of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The Voyage didn't "play" in Petersburg, however, and Catherine is said to have found much of it highly offensive and may have had a hand in the answer to it, entitled, The Antidote, a scathing treatise longer than the Voyage itself.

Ellis Aves E36