Voyages Et Découvertes Faites par les Russes le long des côtes de la Mer Glaciale & sur l'Océan Oriental, tant vers le Japon que vers l'Amérique...traduits de l'Allemand...Par C.G.F. Dumas.

2 Volumes. 12mo. pp. x, [2], 388; iv, 207, [22]index, [3]ads. large folding engraved map. contemporary mottled calf, gilt backs (some chipping & wear to extremities, some age-browning, overall a nice set). First Edition of the French Translation of the third volume of Müller's Nachrichten von Seereisen... (Sammlung Russiche Geschichte (1758)), an invaluable reference source for the history of Russian discovery and exploration in north-east Asia and along the north-west coast of America. It is the best contemporary account of Bering's first and second expeditions to Bering Strait and the western limits of North America, during which he discovered Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Müller served as a scientific associate on Bering's second voyage, 1741-42. Müller’s work also contains the substance of crucial written reports which he found in the archives in the town of Jakutsk which established that the Bering Strait had in fact first been discovered and navigated by Semyon Dezhnyov in 1648. This French translation is apparently fuller and superior to the English translation published by Thomas Jefferys in 1761. The map is a copy of the St. Petersburg 1758 issue of the Müller map (first published in 1754), which contained the first cartographic representation of what is now the Alaska peninsula. The map also confirmed the existence of a body of water between Asia and America, a subject of great controversy over the preceding two hundred years, and presented a correct delineation of the Kurile Islands. Howes M-875. Sabin 51286. Streeter VI 3462. Wickersham 6333. Wagner 614. JCB 1531 (incorrect date 1756 cited). Gagnon I 2479. Wroth, Cartography of the Pacific, p. 263. cfTPL 185, cfLande 1358, cfHill p. 206, cfLada-Mocarski 17 (1st English Edition).