Boston: Houghton Mifflin, and Company, 1885. 1st American edition. 8vo. Light blue cloth, gold and silver gilt lettering on front covers, gilt lettering on spines, still very bright. Black embossed decoration on front covers and spines. Volume I: xxix + [3] + 687pp. Includes b/w frontispiece featuring author, 1 fold-out map, and 35 b/w illustrations. Volume II: xv + [1] + 732pp. Includes b/w double-spread frontispiece, 1 fold-out map, and 33 b/w illustrations. Very good condition overall. Henry Lansdell was a British explorer, and author. He traveled through much of Russian Central Asia and the major cities along the Silk Road. Russian Central Asia recounts Lansdell's second journey east, which took place over a 179-day period between June and December of 1882. Landsell covered a total of 12,145 miles (19,545 kilometers), traveling by rail, water, mounted on horse or camel, or on wheeled conveyances. He visited Semipalatinsk (present-day Kazakhstan); Kuldja (China); Tashkent, Khokand, Samarkand, Qarshi, Bukhara, and Khiva (present-day Uzbekistan), Merv (present-day Turkmenistan), and other locations. Landsell supplemented his own observations with detailed research and consultation with experts. The book contains references to the ways in which, in his view, customs and traditions seen in Central Asia reflected those described in the Bible, the Old Testament in particular. His two-volume account was praised by critics for its detailed descriptions and analyses of places not well known at that time in the English-speaking world. The end of volume two consists of three long appendices: listings of the fauna and flora of Russian Central Asia and a bibliography of 702 authoritative works, in English, French, German, and Russian, on the region. (Quoting the Library of Congress).