11.Ibid.
12.Ibid.
CHAPTER 9: MALARIA
1.Ibid.
2.There is no written record of communication from the State Department to Stephens asking him to investigate the feasibility of the canal location. His instructions were explicit: complete the treaty negotiation and close down the legation in Guatemala City. However, instructions were given to an earlier U.S. envoy to Central America, William Jeffers, to examine and discuss with the republic the construction of the canal across Nicaragua. Charles De Witt mentions in a dispatch to Forsyth that he considered those instructions to be “standing” orders incorporated into his formal instructions, so Stephens may well have assumed the same obligation when he decided to travel to Nicaragua. However, he also noted in a later letter to Forsyth that he made the trip at his own expense, indicating that he saw the matter as unconnected with his official duties. Nonetheless, Stephens delivered all his notes and observations, as well as the canal surveys that he copied, to the U.S. government in Washington on his return. Of course, he also used some of the key material in his book and he may well have considered his firsthand inspection in Nicaragua valuable if he decided to link up with New York friends who were then considering such a canal project.
3.Jefferson had known about the Nicaraguan route as early as 1785, when he received a French manuscript written by Chevalier Bourgoyne concerning the route. He presented the manuscript to the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1817.
4.Other heads of state were equally intrigued by the Nicaragua route. The king of Holland in 1830 won the exclusive right from the new Republic of Central America to construct a canal along San Juan River. Writing from Guatemala five years later, however, Stephens’s predecessor De Witt informed Secretary Forsyth that the Dutch project had fallen through. He added that the opportunity was now ripe for the United States to take on the project.
5.United States Congress., F. P. Blair, et al., The Congressional Globe (Buffalo, NY: Hein, 2007).
6.Manning and U.S. Department of State, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States.
7.Pendergast, Palenque.
8.Don Juan also acted as a guide for Jean-Frédéric Waldeck in the early 1830s and for Stephens and Catherwood.
9.Pendergast, Palenque. Pendergast writes that Caddy’s formal report was meant to accompany his portfolio of drawings and was to serve as an adjunct to a scientific presentation that he later made in London. It is unclear whether it accompanied Walker’s official report to the Colonial Office. His personal diary, by contrast, which Pendergast includes in his book, was apparently never meant for publication or for official eyes.
CHAPTER 10: CRISIS AT HAND
1.Griffith, “Juan Galindo, Central American Chauvanist.” Stephens reported that in the account he heard, Galindo was killed by Indians. “After the battle,” Stephens wrote, “in attempting to escape, with two dragoons and a servant-boy, he passed through an Indian village, was recognized, and they were all murdered with machetes.” Stephens’s Incidents of Travel in Central America, vol. 1, p. 423. However, in a dispatch, Frederick Chatfield wrote: “Colonel Galindo was shot at a village in the state of Honduras called Aguanqueterique . . . he was endeavouring to find his way to San Miguel, after the defeat of his chief Cabañas, when he fell in with a party of Honduran troops, who instantly destroyed him.” Graham, “Juan Galindo, Enthusiast,” pp. 21–22.
2.Galindo did receive the recognition he had long desired. Unfortunately, it came after he died, when he was awarded a silver medal from the French for his discoveries.
3.Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871, p. 120.
4.Bancroft, History of Central America, vol. 13, p. 141.
5.There are a number of reports describing of this historic battle, but Stephens, who spoke with eyewitnesses not long after the battle took place, gives the most vivid account recorded in English. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, vol. 2, pp. 110–15.
6.Morazán, in contrast, had a reputation for treating prisoners well. See Bancroft, History of Central America, vol. 13, p. 141.
7.Ibid., pp. 141–2; F. Crowe, The gospel in Central America containing a sketch of the country, physical and geographical, historical and political, moral and religious: A history of the Baptist mission in British Honduras, and of the introduction of the Bible into the Spanish American republic of Guatemala (London: C. Gilpin, 1850), p. 147.
8.Jose Francisco Morazán Quezada returned to Central America from exile in South America less than two years after his defeat by Carrera. After attempting to raise an army to form a new Central American union, he was captured in Costa Rica in 1842 and executed by firing squad. His death at forty-nine ended all serious attempts to unite the Central American states in a republic.
CATHERWOOD
1.An outline of Frederick Catherwood’s life has emerged from public records, a few existing letters, rare references to him by some of his contemporaries, his own small canon of writings, an account book, Stephens’s narratives, and a key legal case involving his marriage. Of course, Catherwood’s greatest legacy has been his artwork, but even much of that, particularly his work in Egypt, has been lost.
2.See http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=98247.
3.V. W. von Hagen, “F. Catherwood archt” (1799–1854) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), fn. 8, pp. 145–46. Von Hagen’s biography mistakenly identified Nathaniel Catherwood as Frederick’s father. But birth, baptism, and church records identify his father and mother as John James Catherwood and Anne Rowe. Information relating to Frederick Catherwood’s family came from correspondence with Fiona Hodgson and Julie Redman, who are descendants of the Catherwood family and have carefully traced their family tree.
4.J. Aitken, John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), pp. 273–74.
5.Correspondence with Fiona Hodgson and Julie Redman.
6.J. J. Scoles, “Catherwood,” The Dictionary of Architecture (London: Richards, 1852), pp. 53–92.
7.S. Brown, Joseph Severn: A Life: The Rewards of Friendship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), fn. 35, p. 29.
8.A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts; A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from Its Foundation in 1769 to 1904 (London: H. Graves, 1905), p. 14.
9.J. Severn and G. F. Scott, Joseph Severn: Letters and Memoirs (Aldershot, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).
10.Von Hagen, “F. Catherwood archt” (1799–1854).
11.F. Salmon, “Storming the Campo Vaccino: British Architects and the Antique Buildings of Rome after Waterloo,” Architectural History 38 (1995): 146–75.
12.American Ethnological Society, Transactions of the American Ethnological Society (New York: Bartlett & Welford, 1845), p. 487.
13.National Academy of Design Exhibition Record 1826–1860 (New York: National Academy of Design, 1860). His tempera of Mount Etna is one of the few surviving original paintings from the early period of his life.
14.P. Starkey and J. Starkey, Travellers in Egypt (London and New York: Tauris, 1998), p. 48.
15.H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2008), s.v. “Scoles,” p. 908.
16.The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature of the Year 1835 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, 1836), p. 202.
17.K. Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army, and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2002), pp. 95–96.
18.J. Madox, Excursions in the Holy Land, Egypt, Nubia, Syria, &c. Including a Visit to the Unfrequented District of the Haouran (London: R. Bentley, 1834), vol. 2, p. 28.
19.Times (London), August 25, 1824. The newspaper printed an extract from a letter sent from Ghenney on April 21, 1824, reporting that Catherwood, Parke, and Scoles had arrived from thei
r “scientific excursion” and were “in good health.”
20.R. Herzog, “Über Henry Westcars Tagebuch einer Reise durch Ägypten und Nubien (1823–24),” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 24 (1969): 201–11.
21.J. W. Grutz, “The Lost Portfolios of Robert Hay,” www.saudiaramcoworld.com, March/April 2003.
22.Starkey and Starkey, Travellers in Egypt, p. 131.
23.Severn and Scott, Joseph Severn: Letters and Memoirs.
24.V. W. Von Hagen, Frederick Catherwood, archt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. vi.
25.Architectural Publication Society, The Dictionary of Architecture.
26.Downside Review (Downside Abbey, Bath, England) 8 (1889): 115–16.
27.Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, p. 14.
28.Its original name in the Punic era was Thugga. Catherwood called the area Dugga and today it is known as Dougga. It has become a tourist attraction because of numerous Roman ruins found there.
29.Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 474–91.
30.For a time Catherwood believed that he was the monument’s discoverer. Later, however, he learned that the same inscriptions had been copied two hundred years earlier by a French traveler named D’Arcos.
31.When Sir Thomas Reade, the British consul in Tunis, learned of Catherwood’s discovery, he ordered the inscriptions cut from the façade and sent to the British Museum and in the process destroyed much of the tomb. The monument, today called the Lybico-Punic Mausoleum, was reconstructed at the beginning of the twentieth century by French archaeologist Louis Poinssot. A six-foot-long sculptured stone representing “a charioteer driving four horses at full speed,” which Catherwood dug up at the monument’s base, was reattached to its top. Based on the structure’s “earliest and most primitive” style of the Greek columns and capitals and the purely Egyptian architrave and cornices, Catherwood estimated that it was erected close to the founding of Carthage around 900 B.C. Modern experts, however, place the date closer to 300 B.C.
32.Starkey and Starkey, Travellers in Egypt, pp. 132–33.
33.G. A. Hoskins, Visit to the Great Oasis of the Libyan Desert (London, 1837).
34.Ibid. Hoskins described the journey in great detail. The villages they visited are today known as El-Kharga, Baris, Bulaq, and Ezbet Dush.
35.F. Arundale, Illustrations of Jerusalem and Mount Sinai: Including the Most Interesting Sites Between Grand Cairo and Beirout (London: H. Colburn, 1837).
36.W. H. Bartlett, Walks About the City and Environs of Jerusalem (London: George Virtue, 1846). The account by Catherwood is on pp. 161–78.
37.Arundale, Illustrations of Jerusalem and Mount Sinai, p. 69.
38.It was built at approximately the same time that the Mayan cities of Palenque and Copán were thriving in Central America during their peak Classic period.
39.Arundale’s diary ends with their arrival at Beirut, so the details of what exactly followed are unknown.
40.Gertrude Catherwood lists this as her name in Frederick Catherwood’s will.
41.U.S. Department of State, President Garfield, et al., Message from the President of the United States, transmitting, in response to the resolution of the Senate of the 18th ultimo, a report of the secretary of state, with accompanying papers, in relation to the capitulations of the Ottoman Empire (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1881), p. 35.
42.R. Kark, American Consuls in the Holy Land, 1832–1914 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), p. 85.
43.Bonomi’s account of the wedding of Gertrude Abbott and Frederick Catherwood, and their travel afterward, was described in testimony given by Bonomi in a trial in 1841.
44.Correspondence with Fiona Hodgson and Julie Redman.
45.S. Tillett, Egypt Itself: The Career of Robert Hay, Esquire, of Linplum and Nunraw, 1799–1863 (London: SD Books, 1984), pp. 68–71.
46.The Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. (London: W. A. Scripps, 1835), p. 380.
47.Von Hagen, Frederick Catherwood, archt, pp. 43–45.
48.A. J. Downing, A treatise on the theory and practice of landscape gardening adapted to North America; with a view to the improvement of country residences. With remarks on rural architecture (New York: Putnam, 1853). Includes an illustration of Catherwood’s conservatory at p. 452, one of the only illustrations of a structure designed by him. Also see Downing’s “Rural Essays,” p. 201, and Haley’s “Montgomery Place,” p. 13, for more information.
49.Catherwood’s panorama was not the first in America. One had been built in 1818 by the artist John Vanderlyn on land leased from New York City at the northeast corner of City Hall Park. However, it went into bankruptcy eleven years later. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 7 (1912).
50.The bound account ledger that recorded the panorama’s expenses and income from 1838 through 1842 is preserved in the New-York Historical Society archive. Except for the bookkeeper who kept the accounts, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine how Catherwood and Jackson apportioned between them the costs and income over the four years recorded in the ledger, and how profitable the business actually was. It was a complicated enterprise with panoramas sent off for exhibitions in Boston, Baltimore, Toronto, Philadelphia, and other places, for which there is no record of income. In addition, books relating to the panoramas were sold to customers, a small but seemingly thriving sideline. The account book, however, does give the raw numbers for daily income from the New York exhibits, as well as the amount due monthly for renting the land on which the rotunda sat—owned by the Astor family—salaries, publishing expenses, gas bills, taxes, and the cost of renting the panorama canvases themselves.
51.There is evidence that Catherwood took his Jerusalem panorama to Boston to exhibit in 1837. Christian Examiner and General Review 23 (1842): 261.
52.Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, biographer of Stephens and Catherwood, wrote that the two men met in London at Burford’s panorama of Jerusalem, an assertion that has been many times repeated. However, an encounter between the two in England would have been physically impossible. Maritime passenger records show that Catherwood and his family were aboard a ship for New York when Stephens was traveling from Beirut to Alexandria, Egypt. Stephens arrived in New York on September 6, 1836. Catherwood and family had arrived three months earlier, on June 7, 1836.
53.Exman, The Brothers Harper, p. 121.
54.The Knickerbocker; or, New-York Monthly Magazine 54 (1859).
55.Ibid., pp. 318–19.
56.S. E. Morison, William Hickling Prescott, 1796–1859 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1958).
57.Von Hagen, Frederick Catherwood, archt, n. 4, pp. 152–53. Von Hagen quotes from John R. Bartlett Correspondence, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. A copy of this letter is also in the file of the Victor von Hagen Papers at the New-York Historical Society.
58.“Biographical Notice,” in the London edition of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, published by Catherwood in 1854.
59.“Court of Exchequer,” Times (London), December 11, 1841.
60.BANC MSS ZZ 116, contract between Stephens and Catherwood.
CHAPTER 12: JOURNEY INTO THE PAST
1.Bancroft, History of Central America, ch. 25. The capital has been called various names. Stephens referred to it as Patinamit. And the name given it by the Mexican warriors who accompanied Alvarado on his conquest was Quauhtemala, which was later transformed to the general name for the country, Guatemala.
2.M. Restall and F. G. L. Asselbergs, Invading Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). This excellent book offers a Rashomon-like version of the conquest of Central America, with English translations of records, letters, and other accounts of the invasion by the conquistadors, including those of Pedro de Alvarado and his brother, Jorge, the Mexican Indians who accompanied th
em, and the conquered Indians themselves.
3.R. J. Sharer and S. G. Morley, The Ancient Maya (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 737–41. Bancroft, History of Central America, also gives a detailed account of Alvarado’s conquest of Central America (chs. 22–27). As has been mentioned, the Spanish capital, called Santiago, was relocated several times. It went from the foot of Volcan Agua, following a huge mudslide that buried much of the town, to the nearby Panchoy Valley, where it remained for several centuries, until 1773, when this city too was destroyed, this time by an earthquake. The remains of that city came to be known as La Antigua when the capital was moved for the last time to its current location and eventually named Guatemala City. Today the town of Ciudad Vieja, or Old City, occupies the site at the foot of Volcan Agua. And La Antigua, with its lovely colonial-style houses, churches, and cobblestone streets, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
4.It should be noted that the K’iche’ and the Kaqchikel Maya were no pushovers in the face of the Spanish onslaught. The Maya fought heroically but their warrior class was already decimated by the Old World diseases, principally smallpox, which had spread rapidly from the Europeans and preceded the invasion. The Spaniards, though small in numbers, were tough and disciplined. And they were aided significantly by thousands of Tlaxcan warriors and other Indian groups sent from Mexico on the Conquest, along with the often-mentioned technological superiority of Spanish firearms, artillery, steel weapons, armor, and horses, terrifying animals that the Indians had never seen before.
5.Utatlán, however, was one of the better documented of Guatemala’s Indian sites. As it had done with Galindo’s investigation of Copán, the liberal Guatemalan government under Galvez had also commissioned Miguel Rivera y Maestre in 1834 to make a thorough examination of Utatlán, or what remained of it. Stephens met Rivera y Maestre in Guatemala City and described him as “a gentleman distinguished for his scientific and antiquarian tastes.” He gave Stephens a copy of his government report, in addition to a small clay statue of a seated Mayan figure that he had extracted from the ruins.
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