A pleasant copy of this important account on Siberia in the eighteenth century, with two large maps not in the first edition. The map of volume one is new to this edition, and shows on a large scale Eastern Europe and Persia, from the Baltics to the Tigris. The map of volume two is an updated version of the one found in the first edition, with greater detail of Siberia and Eastern Russia.

John Bell (1691-1780) was engaged as a medical attendant in 1715 to Artemy Volynsky (1689-1740), newly made Russian ambassador to Persia by Peter the Great. They set off in July of that year through Moscow and Cazan, then down the Volga to Astrakhan. From there they sailed across the Caspian sea to Derbend and trekked through Baku, Tabris, Kashan, and Saba, arriving in Isfahan in March of 1717. Bell had barely returned to St. Petersburg before he was engaged again in an embassy, this time spending four years travelling to Beijing through Siberia and China. Upon his return in 1722 Peter the Great launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723 against the declining Persian Safavid Empire. Bell's former journey to Persia gave him peculiar advantages, and he was accordingly engaged to accompany the army to Derbend, from which he returned in December 1722.

Bell's descriptions of the manners, customs and superstitions of the peoples he encountered, and of the Dalai-Lama and the Great Wall, are notable as he was writing from a professional and personal perspective rather than with the intent of formulating a diplomatic account.

2 vols, 8vos (20.8 x 12.5 cm); 2 large folding engraved maps ('Petersburg to Ispahan and from Petersburg to Constantinople' and 'Moscow to Pekin'), touch of foxing to first few leaves, occasional unobtrusive pencil annotations, a couple of small repaired marginal tears, loss to outer margin of p125-6 avoiding text; contemporary full calf, spine in five gilt ruled compartments, gilt red morocco lettering pieces, all edges speckled red, light wear to extremities, small wormhole to bottom compartment of vol 1, a very good set; xvi, 442; vi, 554pp.

Ghani p35; cf Blackmer 111; Cordier Sinica 2093.