RussianChineseFrontier-murray-1861 $575.00 Title Map of Russian and Chinese Frontier Illustrating the Journey of Semenof to the Tian-Shan Mounts. and R. Jaxartes and Golubof's Issyk-kul Expedition. 1861 (dated) 1 : 2112000 Description This is an 1861 John Murray map of Central Asia tracing Pyotr Semyonov's (1827 - 1914) first European ascent into the Tian Shan Mountains. The map depicts the region from Lake Balkash south to the Tian Shan Mountains, encompassing modern-day Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and western China - at the time considered one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world. The Semyonov Expedition to the Tian Shan MountainsA red line traces the Russian mountaineer Pyotr Petrovich Semyonov Tyan-Shansky's (Пётр Петрович Семёнов-Тян-Шанский; 1827 - 1914) 1857 expedition into the heart of the Tian Shan Mountains, which he undertook at the suggestion of the German naturalist Alexander von Humbolt (1769 - 1859), under whom he studied geography in Berlin. Pyotr visited the Eastern Kyrgyzstan Lake Issyk Kul, the world's second-largest saltwater lake, and then explored the interior of the Tian Shan Range. He became the first European to look on the dramatic Tengri Tag (Mountains of Heaven) panorama and see the second highest peak, Khan Tengri. Semyonov published the first systematic description of the region in 1858 to immediate international acclaim. His monograph was so influential and career-defining that fifty years later Czar Nicholas II of Russia authorized Semyonov to 'Tian-Shansky' (of the Tian Shan) to his name.