Paris: Adrien le Clere, 1853. Second edition. Two volumes, 12mo. pp 440; (iv), 318. Folding map at front of volume I. Half titles present. Bound in contemporary (publishers?) full marbled sheep, spines with two red labels and gilt decoration, marbled page edges, marbled endpapers. Shallow chips at spine ends; some rubbing and a bit of peeling to the patterned surface; cracked joints of volume II neatly repaired; ink owner name in top margin of each title page; 8 cm closed tear to right hand side of map neatly repaired on blank side with clear archival paper tape (no paper loss); bit of flaking to gilt spine ornamentation; cracked inner hinges skillfully repaired with rice paper; else a VG pair, sound in the bindings; text quite clean and unworn. Huc was a French Lazarist missionary who went out to China in 1839. He stayed in Macao 18 months, then made his way to Peking and eventually to He Shuy, just inside the Mogolian border, where he devoted himself to learning the language and customs of the Tartars. At the urging of the vicar apostolic of Mongolia, he set out on an expedition to Tibet in 1844. After much suffering and crossing the punishing Ordos Desert, his party reached the Tibet border in Jan., 1845, where he stayed for a few months at the famous Kunbum Lamasery where he studied Tibetan and Buddhism. The party eventually reached Lhasa 19 Jan., 1846, but Chinese authorities ordered him to Canton in Oct., 1846, where he remained for nearly 3 years before returning to Europe in shattered health in 1852. The present book was famous in its day and was translated into English by William Hazlitt in 1851. "[Huc's] works are written in a lucid, racy, picturesque style, which secured for them an unusual degree of popularity. The SOUVENIRS is a narrative of a remarkable feat of travel, and contains passages of so singular a character as in the absence of corroborative testimony to stir up a feeling of incredulity. That Huc was suspected unjustly was amply proved by later research. But he was by no means a practical geographer, and the record of his travels loses greatly in value from the want of precise scientific data." - EB, 11th edition. This second edition was re-set, but with few textual changes from the 1850 first edition.