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[STEAMSHIP NAVIGATION IN RUSSIA]. Two Primary Source Manuscript Diaries Of an Unnamed English Engineer Contracted by the Amoor Shipping Company Concerning Pioneering Navigation and Commerce of Early Steam Ships On the Amur and Shilka Rivers, 1861-1880. [Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, Chita, Sretensk, Blagoveshchensk, TransBaikal villages, 17 May 1861 - 23 September 1880.] Two manuscript journals of an English Engineer in Russian Far East, contracted to test and repair some of the pioneering steamships on the Rivers Amur and Shilka, and other important works in the Trans-Baikal region, beginning his work some 24 years before the founding of the Eastern Siberian Inland Navigation Company, and interacting several notables who were involved in the development projects. 8vo. The earliest volume comprises 113 pages of manuscript entries dating from 17 May 1861 to 22 July 1861 and then a few pages from and then from 1 January 1868 to 22 May 1870, with a tipped-in folding map of the Amur River. The subsequent volume contains 135 pages in manuscript and dates from 14 August 1876 to 23 September 1880. Cloth over marbled boards. Volumes measure approximately 8 x 6 ½” and 9 ½ x 7 ½” respectively. Map measures approximately 18 x 7 ½”. Wear to boards, hinges loose, otherwise internally clean, an exceedingly scarce and early primary source account of early developments of steam navigation in the Far East of Russia. This account is very early for the region, particularly the inner reaches of the Amur river and its tributaries, where there were scarce inhabitants or even visitors, and thus are even fewer surviving manuscript accounts. It pre-dates the founding of the important “Eastern Siberian Inland Navigation Company” which would be founded in 1885, twenty-four years after the writer began his pioneering work. It also pre-dates the Trans-Siberian Railway which would be built between 1891 and 1916 under the supervision of Russian government ministers personally appointed by Tsar Alexander III and his son, the Tsarevich Nicholas (later Tsar Nicholas II). Full description available upon request.