Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-Shoes

Bush's engaging and beautifully illustrated, journal of exploration in the Kamchatka Peninsula was first published in 1871. His travels were undertaken as a member of the 1865–7 Russo-American Telegraph Expedition, which planned to lay cable from San Francisco to Moscow via Russian America (now Alaska) and Siberia.

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The Russo-American Telegraph Project of 1865–7 was truly monumental. Although plans to lay cable from San Francisco to Moscow via Alaska and Siberia were superseded by the laying of the sub-Atlantic cable, one of the benefits of the enterprise was the knowledge of the area gained by those engineers and explorers sent out to assess the task. Publication of their experiences and travels followed and one such work was this journal by Richard James Bush, first published in 1871 by Harper & Brothers, describing his adventures in Siberia between 1865 and 1867. Bush makes it clear that this is not a scientific account, but a travel narrative containing observations of his time in the Kamchatka Peninsula and the area of Siberia by the Sea of Okhotsk, of herding deer and life in the tundra. The engagingly written book is illustrated with fine drawings of the region by Bush himself.