Petr Petrovich Semenov - Russian geographer, botanist, statistician. In 1849 he graduated from St. Petersburg University and became a member of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1853, Semyonov went abroad and listened to lectures at the University of Berlin for three years. The idea of the Tien Shan expedition originated in him on the eve of his trip to Europe. Semenov himself wrote about this in his memoirs: “My work on Asian geography led me ... to a thorough acquaintance with everything that was known about inner Asia. The most central of the Asian mountain ranges, the Tien Shan, which had not yet been set foot by a European traveler and which was known only from scarce Chinese sources, beckoned me in particular ... To penetrate deep into Asia to the snowy peaks of this unattainable ridge, which the great Humboldt, on the basis of the same meager Chinese information, he considered it to be volcanic, and to bring him several samples from the fragments of the rocks of this ridge, and home - a rich collection of flora and fauna of a country newly discovered for science - that seemed to me the most tempting feat.
Peter Semenov began to carefully and comprehensively prepare for the trip to the Tien Shan. In 1853 and 1854 he visited the Alps and made numerous excursions in the mountains on foot, without a guide, with a compass, doing geological and botanical research. He also visited Vesuvius, having made about two dozen ascents on it. Returning to Russia in 1856, Semenov received the consent of the Council of the Geographical Society to equip him for the expedition. At the time when Semenov was already preparing for a long journey, at the foot of the Zailiysky Alatau - one of the northern ranges of the Tien Shan - the Russians laid the fortification of Vernoye (now the city of Almaty).
In early May 1856, Pyotr Semyonov set off on his journey. “... I traveled by rail to Moscow and further to Nizhny along the highway, bought a Kazan-made tarantass there and went by post along the large Siberian highway ...” - he told about the beginning of the journey in his memoirs. The route ran through Barnaul, Semipalatinsk, Kopal to the Vernoye fortification - to the foot of the Trans-Ili Alatau.
2 Lake Issyk-Kul
Exploration of the Tien Shan began with a visit to Issyk-Kul. With great difficulty, the traveler reached the then deserted shores of this mountain lake, covered only with groves of small trees and tall shrubs. “Only occasionally,” he wrote, “felt yurts of Kyrgyz shepherds turn white from such groves and the long neck of a two-humped camel sticks out, and even more rarely, a large herd of wild boars or the formidable ruler of these reed thickets, a bloodthirsty tiger, jumps out of the vast forest of dense reeds that borders the grove.”
Issyk-Kul is a huge lake, one of the deepest in Europe and Asia. About 80 mountain rivers flow into Issyk-Kul, originating in the Tien Shan mountains, but not a single river flows out of it. At the time of Semyonov's travels, information about Issyk-Kul was negligible. Geographers believed, for example, that it was from this lake that one of the great Central Asian rivers, the Chu River, began. Semenov's two trips to Issyk-Kul, especially the second, when he visited its western tip, were marked by great scientific results. Passing through the narrow Boom gorge, through which the Chu carries its waters noisily, Semenov reached the Issyk-Kul coast. Here he carried out a number of geological and geographical observations and for the first time established that the Chu does not begin from a lake, but in one of the mountain valleys of the Tien Shan. In his letter sent to the Russian Geographical Society, Semenov wrote: “My second big trip to the Chu River exceeded my expectations with its success: I not only managed to cross the Chu, but even reached Issyk-Kul, i.e. its western extremity, on which the foot of a European has not yet set foot and to which no scientific research has touched.
Semenov's observations established that Chu, before reaching Issyk-Kul, turns sharply in the opposite direction from the lake, crashing into the mountains rising on the western side of Issyk-Kul and, finally, breaks into the Boom Gorge.
3 First ascent of the Tien Shan
The following year, 1857, Semyonov went to the mountains. His companion was the artist Kosharov, a drawing teacher at the Tomsk gymnasium. Leaving Verny, the travelers reached the southern shore of Issyk-Kul, and from there, through the Zaukinsky Pass, famous in antiquity, they penetrated to the upper reaches of the Syr Darya, which had not yet been reached by anyone.
Having passed through the forest zone of the Tien Shan, Semenov left the detachment with packs and camels accompanying him at the last fir trees and continued his ascent, accompanied by Kosharov and several companions. “At last we reached the top of the pass, which presented me with an unexpected sight; the mountain giants were no longer in front of me, and ahead of me was an undulating plain, from which snow-covered peaks rose in relatively low hills. Between them one could see green lakes, only partly covered with ice, and where it was not, flocks of beautiful scoter were swimming on them. Hypsometric measurement gave me 3,380 meters for the absolute height of the Zaukinsky Pass. I felt a noise in my ears, and it seemed to me that blood would immediately come out of them.
The travelers continued south along the rolling highlands. In front of them stretched a vast plateau-syrt, on which were scattered small half-frozen lakes, located between relatively low mountains, however, covered with snow on the peaks, and on the slopes with luxurious greenery of alpine meadows. Luxurious meadows with large bright flowers of blue and yellow gentians, lavender bathing suits, white and yellow buttercups covered all the slopes of the hills. But most beautiful were the vast fields, overgrown with golden heads of a special, previously undescribed type of onion, which later received the name Semenov's onion from botanists.
From the top of one of the mountains, the travelers saw the upper reaches of the Naryn tributaries flowing from the syrt lakes. Thus, for the first time, the origins of the vast Jaxartes river system were reached by a European traveler. From here the expedition moved back.
4 Second ascent of the Tien Shan
Soon Semenov made a second, even more successful ascent of the Tien Shan. The route of the expedition this time passed in a more easterly direction. Climbing up the Karkare River, a significant tributary of the Ili River, then along the Kok-Dzhar, one of the upstream rivers of the Karkara, the traveler climbed to a pass of about 3,400 meters separating Kok-Dzhar from Sary-Dzhas.
“When we got ... to the top of the mountain pass,” Semyonov wrote, “we were blinded by an unexpected sight. Directly to the south of us rose the most majestic mountain range I had ever seen. It was all, from top to bottom, consisted of snow giants, of which I could count no less than thirty to my right and left. This whole ridge, together with all the gaps between the mountain peaks, was covered nowhere with an uninterrupted veil of eternal snow. Just in the middle of these giants, one snow-white, pointed pyramid, sharply separating between them in its colossal height, towered, which seemed from the height of the pass to be twice the height of the other peaks.
This is how the top of Khan-Tengri was discovered, which until recently was considered the highest in the Tien Shan. Having visited the sources of Sary-Dzhas, Semnov discovered the vast glaciers of the northern slope of Khan-Tengri, from which Sary-Dzhas originates. One of these glaciers was later named after Semenov.
In the area of the upper reaches of the Sary-Dzhaz, Semenov made another interesting discovery. He was the first researcher to see with his own eyes the huge mountain sheep of the Tien Shan - the kochkara - an animal that zoologists considered completely extinct.
The way back to the foot of the Tien Shan Semenov took a different route, following the valley of the Tekesa River. In the same summer, he explored the Zailiysky Alatau, visited the area of Katu in the Ili plain, the Dzungarian Alatau and the Ala-Kul lake. The completion of the expeditions of 1856 - 1857. Semenov visited two mountain passes of Tarbagatai.
By an imperial decree on November 23, 1906, for merits in the first study of the Tien Shan, the prefix Tien Shan was attached to his surname "with descendant offspring".