MICHIE (Alexander).
The Siberian Overland Route From Peking to Petersburg, through the Deserts and Steppes of Mongolia, Tartary, &c.
The Brooke-Hitching copy
As a trader, Alexander Michie (1833-1902) spent a number of years travelling in China and is best known for his writing on that country. After one particularly dramatic trip, during which he joined an expedition up the Yangtze River to protect British trade, he returned to England by the route of Siberia (ODNB). That trip, in 1863, fruited The Siberian Overland Route which relates Michie’s passage between the capitals of China and Russia.
On the first page Michie states John Bell (1691-1780) as his inspiration, and the author is quite right in saying (in the preface) that no comparable English-language account of travel across Siberia had been given since Bell. As a result Michie’s narrative is an important document of that expanse, which was forever changed by the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the years 1891-1916.
