8.Only two months earlier, Catherwood had impressed society members with the range of his antiquarian knowledge when he submitted a paper to the society that illustrated his discovery eleven years earlier of the 2,500-year-old monument in Dugga, Tunisia, near the site of ancient Carthage. Proceedings of the New-York Historical Society (1844), p. 11.
9.The society’s president, eighty-year-old Albert Gallatin, expressed his wholehearted support and noted that “the well-known character, skill and experience of the eminent artist employed on this occasion, give a complete guarantee of the scrupulous fidelity of the original drawings. Mr. Catherwood is the only artist and antiquarian who has visited and studied the most celebrated ruins of the other hemisphere and those of America.” Ibid., pp. 54–57.
10.Von Hagen, Frederick Catherwood, archt, pp. 158–59. Von Hagen quotes the Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser, May 10 and June 3, 1843.
11.During this same period Stephens was more successful on a second project, one aimed at helping Prescott. He brokered a deal between his publisher, Harper & Brothers, and Prescott to publish Conquest of Mexico. Stephens gained nothing financially, acting out of friendship and in Prescott’s best interests. But he also knew he was adding significantly to the prestige of his publishers. Conquest of Mexico was published by the Harpers in late 1843 and was followed four years later by Prescott’s Conquest of Peru. The books went through edition after edition, came to be considered masterpieces of research and narrative history, and brought Prescott fame as one of the nineteenth century’s greatest historians. Prescott and Wolcott, The Correspondence of William Hickling Prescott, 1833–1847, p. 368.
12.Ibid., pp. 366–67.
13.Ibid., p. 381.
14.The Times of London reported on August 25, 1843, that when Queen Victoria went in state to close the session of Parliament, “Mr. F. Catherwood, whose talents as an artist are well-known to the public from his illustrations . . . had the honor of submitting his interesting collection of original drawings to the inspection of his royal Highness Prince Albert and their royal Highnesses, the Prince de Joinville and the Duc d’Aunale on Tuesday.”
15.Prescott and Wolcott, The Correspondence of William Hickling Prescott, 1833–1847, pp. 426–27.
16.“Antiquities of Central America,” Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal, Scientific and Railway Gazetter 7 (1844): 92–94.
17.Imperial folio pages are 22 by 15 inches in size.
18.The New York edition was printed by Bartlett & Welford, also in 1844.
19.Von Hagen in his biography of Catherwood gives various numbers for the cost of the work but gives no indication of how he came by the figures.
20.Prescott and Wolcott, The Correspondence of William Hickling Prescott, 1833–1847, p. 466.
21.Advertisement for the sale of View of Ancient Monuments in the Examiner (London)—5.5 pounds for tinted version and 12.12 pounds for the colored and mounted version in portfolio. “Publish by F. Catherwood at No. 9 Argyll Place, Regent Street, London.”
22.An article in the Daily News of London on March 19, 1860, titled “Baron Humboldt and Prince Albert,” notes that in exchange for Humboldt presenting Prince Albert with a copy of his book Kosmos, Humboldt “was vexed at the prince sending him a copy of Catherwood’s Views in Central America, a book,” he says, “that I purchased two years ago. . . .”
23.Prescott and Wolcott, The Correspondence of William Hickling Prescott, 1833–1847, p. 464.
24.Ibid.
25.Ibid., p. 486.
CHAPTER 23: STEAM
1.A. C. Sutcliffe, Robert Fulton and the “Clermont” (New York: Century, 1909).
2.Victor von Hagen in his biography Frederick Catherwood, Archt. states that he did return. He cites architectural work Catherwood engaged in but gives no documentary reference for any such work. However, there was a New York exhibition of Catherwood’s Central American work and a few other design items sometime in 1845. See National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826–60, pp. 71–72, which gives his address at 86 Prince Street, New York. And a lithograph under Catherwood’s name (and others) in June 1845 was submitted in a contest for a proposed statue in New York. See I. N. Phelps Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909 (New York: R. H. Dodd, 1915–28), vol. 5, p. 1792. These activities indicate that Catherwood may have been in New York, or that the materials may have been submitted by others on his behalf. There is also no record of his arriving in the United States by ship during this interval, whereas all of his other arrivals by ship had been recorded.
3.F. Catherwood, Engineers Report, British Library, p. 7.
4.A. Odlyzko, “Collective Hallucinations and Inefficient Markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s,” University of Minnesota, 2010.
5.Catherwood, Engineers Report. All additional references in the text to Catherwood’s contract and work for the Demerara Railway Company can be found in the Engineers Report, which includes a committee report to shareholders in London on April, 15, 1847, and Catherwood’s full report of October 30, 1846, with appendices. Also see L. Kandasammy, “From Georgetown to Mahaica: A Brief History of South America’s First Railway,” Stabroek News, Georgetown, Guyana, December 7, 2006.
6.M. Y. Beach, Wealth and Pedigree of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City comprising an alphabetical arrangement of persons estimated to be worth (New York: Sun Office, 1842), p. 22.
7.Many of the documents recording Benjamin and John Stephens’s business transactions can be found among J. L. Stephens’s personal papers, located at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
8.The buildings are gone today. Leroy Place had occupied a stretch of Bleecker Street between Mercer and Greene Streets, which is now occupied by New York University buildings.
9.A. Nevins, The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922), p. 191. The relation was Parke Godwin, Bryant’s son-in-law and a longtime journalist at the Post.
10.Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 713.
11.C. Hemstreet, Literary New York: Its Landmarks and Associations (New York and London: Knickerbocker Press, 1903), pp. 175–80.
12.American Anthropologist (1900).
13.New York Herald, April 25, 1846.
14.Report of the debates and proceedings of the convention for the revision of the constitution of the state of New York, 1846 (Albany, NY: Evening Atlas, 1846). There are multiple reference to Stephens, as well as his votes, searchable online.
15.BANC MSS ZZ 116. See letter from John Dash Van Buren.
16.A. Gibson and A. Donovan, The Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 51–52.
17.“Ocean Steam Navigation,” New York Times, March 20, 1864.
18.J. H. Morrison, History of American Steam Navigation (New York: W. F. Sametz, 1903), p. 408. See also Mechanics’ Magazine, June 26, 1847, p. 622. The cost was $120 for a first-class cabin, and $60 for second-class. Postage for a letter was 24 cents for one-half ounce or less, and 15 cents for each additional half ounce. The one sour note of the Washington’s maiden voyage came when the seven-year-old British mail steamship Britannia left Boston on the same day and managed to beat the much more powerful Washington to England by two days, an achievement the British did not let the American forget. For a detailed history of the Washington and the Ocean Steam Navigation Company see the excellent account: C. Ridgely-Nevitt, American Steamships on the Atlantic (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980).
19.“The American Steam-ship ‘Washington,’” http://www.theshipslist.com/1847/washington.html.
20.Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review (1847), pp. 357–64.
21.Littell’s Living Age (1847), pp. 151–53.
22.BANC MSS ZZ 116, Folder 230, Box IV.
CHAPTER 24: PANAMA
1.Obituary of William H. Aspinwall, New York Times, January 19, 1875.
2.H. Hall, America’s Successful Men of Affairs. An Encyclopedia of Cont
emporaneous Biography (New York: New-York Tribune, 1895), vol. 1, p. 31.
3.J. R. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, an Old-Time Sailor of the Sea (New York: Macmillan, 1922). For information on Griffiths career see pp. 184–88.
4.A. H. Clark, The Clipper Ship Era (New York: Putnam, 1910), pp. 61–77.
5.R. Johnson and J. H. Brown, The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans (Boston: Biographical Society, 1904).
6.A. Laing, The Sea Witch: A narrative of the experiences of Capt. Roger Murray and others in an American clipper ship during the years 1846 to 1956 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1933). For an excellent account of the sea trade to the Pacific coast during the Gold Rush, see J. P. Delgado, To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990). In May 2003 the trimaran Great American II made the Hong Kong–New York voyage in 72 days and 21 hours. The Sea Witch continues to hold the record for a for a monohulled sailing ship. The Sea Witch was later put into service by Howland & Aspinwall during the Gold Rush to carry high-valued and perishable cargo around Cape Horn from New York to San Francisco, and several times made the trip in just over one hundred days.
7.As a condition of awarding the government mail subsidies, all of the mail steamships had to be available for emergency conversion to warships if the navy needed them, and they had to be built to such specifications and pass such inspections as would permit such conversion.
8.F. N. Otis, Isthmus of Panama: History of the Panama Railroad; and of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1867), pp. 149–55.
9.Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848–1869, pp. 22–23.
10.Ibid., p. 254. Kemble estimates that a minimum number of 335 traveled over the isthmus from New York to San Francisco in 1848, but he notes that official records are nonexistent and figures are difficult to accurately calculate.
11.BANC MSS ZZ 116, Box III, dated March 26, 1848.
12.Otis, Isthmus of Panama, p. 17.
13.W. C. Fowler, Memorials of the Chaunceys, Including President Chauncey, His Ancestors and Descendants (Boston: H. W. Dutton, 1858).
14.Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848–1869, p. 31.
15.Ibid., pp. 32–33.
16.O. C. Coy, The Great Trek (Los Angeles: Powell, 1931), pp. 71–74.
17.O. Lewis and J. B. Goodman, Sea Routes to the Gold Fields: The Migration by Water to California in 1849–1852 (New York: Knopf, 1949), pp. 5–10.
18.When the SS California finally reached Panama on January 17, 1849, it was besieged by more than seven hundred gold seekers, most of whom had traveled down to Panama and crossed the isthmus to Panama City, where they desperately sought a way to get up to California. The California was built to accommodate no more than 250 passengers but left Panama for San Francisco on January 31 with just over four hundred. Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848–1869, pp. 34–35.
19.J. K. Polk and M. M. Quaife, The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency, 1845 to 1849 (Chicago: McClurg, 1910), vol. 4, p. 235.
20.Panama Railroad Company Prospectus, 1949, New York Public Library.
21.“Congressional Summary,” American Whig Review 9, no. 14 (1849): 208–16.
22.Polk and Quaife, The Diary of James K. Polk, vol. 4, entry for January 30, 1849.
23.The concession also included provisions for the railroad to revert to Granadan ownership earlier than the forty-nine years. Granada had the right, for example, to buy the railroad after twenty years for $5 million, after thirty years for $4 million, and after forty years for $2 million.
24.Aside from the three originators of the railroad, the initial directors were James Brown, Cornelius W. Lawrence, Gouverneur Kemble, Thomas W. Ludlow, David Thompson, Joseph B. Varnum, Samuel S. Howland, Prosper M. Wetmore, Edwin Bartlett, Horatio Allen, and associates. See A. Perez-Venero, Before the Five Frontiers: Panama, from 1821–1903 (New York: AMS Press, 1978), p. 63.
25.Panama Railroad Company charter, 1849, New York Public Library.
26.The three initial partners were granted $50,000 in stock, and, perhaps more important, half ownership of 250,000 acres of additional land that had been granted by Granada as part of the concession, including mineral rights.
27.Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848–1869, p. 183; Perez-Venero, Before the Five Frontiers, p. 63.
28.“Railway Meetings,” Daily News (London), 1849.
29.Kandasammy, “From Georgetown to Mahaica.”
30.Passenger List of Vessels Arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1800–1882, Micropublication M425., rolls #1–71. National Archives, Washington, D.C.
31.BANC MSS ZZ 116, letter from Catherwood to Stephens, July 4, 1850.
32.Ibid., letter from Catherwood to Stephens, August 18, 1849.
33.Ibid., letter from Catherwood to Stephens, October 2, 1849
34.Ibid., letter from Catherwood to Stephens, October 19, 1849.
35.Ibid., letter from Aspinwall to Stephens, October 4, 1849.
36.Ibid., letter from Catherwood to Stephens, October 8, 1849.
37.Ibid., letter from Aspinwall to Stephens, November 15, 1849.
38.Ibid., letter from Stephens to father, December 10, 1849.
CHAPTER 25: CROSSING THE ISTHMUS
1.Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848–1869 pp. 146-7.
2.Oran, “Tropical Journeyings,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 18 (1859): 145–69, 141. Much of the narrative of the construction of the railroad is taken from this account, which was written within ten years of the events and in turn based on accounts from those involved, along with company documents and letters. Most important also was the account written by the railroad’s chief engineer, George Totten, who was present throughout the construction of the railroad. See M. Eissler and G. M. Totten, “The Panama Canal,” Scientific American Supplement 14, no. 347 (1882). Some of the information is also corroborated by handwritten accounts of various participants found in John L. Stephens’s personal papers at the University of California’s Bancroft library. Also see Otis, Isthmus of Panama; R. Tomes, Panama in 1855: An account of the Panama rail-road, of the cities of Panama and Aspinwall, with sketches of life and character on the Isthmus (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855); T. Robinson, Panama: A Personal Record of Forty-Six Years, 1861–1907 (New York: Star & Herald, 1907).
3.Oran, “Tropical Journeyings.”
4.BANC MSS ZZ 116. Stephens writes his father from Panama City on December 27, 1849.
5.BANC MSS ZZ 116, Stephens writes his father from Panama City on January 22, 1850.
6.D. G. McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), p. 64.
7.BANC MSS ZZ 116. Stephens writes his father from Bogotá on March 17, 1850.
8.Hawks, “The Late John L. Stephens.”
9.BANC MSS ZZ 116. Aspinwall writes to Stephens in Bogotá on May 13, 1950.
10.Ibid. Stephens’s sister Amelia Ann writes to Stephens in Bogotá on May 1, 1850.
11.Syracuse Daily Star, July 10, 1850; Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848–1869.
12.BANC MSS ZZ 116, letters to Stephens from President of Granada dated April 29, 1850, and from Victoriano de Diego Paredes to Benjamin Stephens, May 31, 1855.
13.Hawks, “The Late John L. Stephens.”
14.Eissler and Totten, “The Panama Canal.”
15.BANC MSS ZZ 116. Catherwood writes from Panama City to Stephens at Bogotá on June 6, 1850.
16.Ibid. Catherwood writes to Stephens at Navy Bay on July 4, 1850.
17.Oran, “Tropical Journeyings.”
18.Eissler and Totten, “The Panama Canal.” This contains G. M. Totten’s own account of the building of the railroad, published in 1882.
19.Tomes, Panama in 1855, pp. 112–14.
20.BANC MSS ZZ 116. Catherwood writes from Panama City to Stephens in Navy Bay on July 4, 1850.
21.Ibid. Catherwood writes from San Francisco to Stephens in New York on August 28, 1850.
22.Ibid. Catherwood writes from Benicia, California, to Stephens in New York on October 20, 1850.
23.Ibid. Catherwood writes from San Francisco to Stephens in New York on January 1851.
24.Ibid. Nephew Pratt Stephens writes from San Francisco to J. Stephens at Bogotá on April 1, 1850.
25.Ibid. Catherwood writes from Benicia, California, to Stephens in New York on October 20, 1850.
26.W. Nelson, Five Years at Panama: The Trans-Isthmian Canal (New York: Belford, 1889), p. 147.
27.Robinson, Panama, p. 15.
28.Eissler and Totten, “The Panama Canal.”
29.Estimates in many thousands were also likely exaggerations put out by rival transport companies in Nicaragua and Mexico hoping to scare off tradesmen and laborers (and passengers) from traveling to Panama. And it worked. Newspapers in New York and other cities frequently described the lethal unhealthiness of the isthmus and repeated the high number of deaths among the workers, which eventually made recruiting all but impossible, at least in the United States.
30.United States Board of Consulting Engineers on Panama Canal, J. F. Wallace, et al., Report of the Board of Consulting Engineers for the Panama Canal (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1906), p. 18.
31.J. B. Bishop, The Panama Gateway (New York: Scribner’s, 1913), p. 48. Totten states that 835 out of 6,000 died. Report of the Board of Consulting Engineers for the Panama Canal, p. 18.
32.BANC MSS ZZ 116, letter to Stephens at Navy Bay from George W. Matthews dated March 18, 1851.
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