[Rarebooks] FA: 1867 Panama & Central American Canal Surveys & Maps

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

Offered to the highest bidder this week, an important 1867 collection of 
reports and maps for an inter-oceanic canal across Central America. Offered 
without reserve, because reserves won't do you any good in the jungle when 
you're fighting off mosquitoes the size of pumpkins-
<http://tinyurl.com/nlnlx>

"REPORT ON INTEROCEANIC CANALS AND RAILROADS BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC AND 
PACIFIC OCEANS"  compiled by Rear-Admiral Charles H. Davis. Published in 
Washington by the Government Printing Office: 1867.

Almost from the time the Pacific Ocean was discovered lurking, 
tantalizingly, over there on the other side of Central America, 
businessmen, explorers, engineers and entrepreneurs on the Atlantic side 
had been seeking ways to get across to it efficiently, rather than take the 
long, dangerous, and costly voyage around South America. Attempts to build 
a railroad or canal were thwarted again and again by inadequate technology, 
thick jungles, and malaria-carrying mosquitoes the size of grapefruits. But 
for every survey and scheme that fell flat, another would come along a few 
years later.

Prior to the engineering frenzy of the late 19th century which culminated 
in the actual, honest-to-God building of a canal in Panama, the decades 
before and after the American Civil War were the Golden Age of these 
explorers and engineers. It started with the American Gold Rush of 1849 
which provided the necessary commercial impetus for new work on a canal or 
railroad, and a railroad across Panama was finally built. But still- it 
would be so much more satisfying to just be able to steam a ship through, 
wouldn't it? After a break for the carnage of the Civil War, the American 
government once more gazed southward. One of its first acts was to 
commission this study by Rear Admiral Charles H. Davis, which is a 
compilation of the best studies that had gone before, primarily work of the 
1840s and 1850s.

The report was apparently first ordered and issued in 1866, and updated 
with additional information in 1867, of which this is an example. The text 
first addresses the advantages and disadvantages, and history of the 
exploration, of each of the principal possible routes- Tehuantepec, 
Honduras, Nicaragua, Chiriqui, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Atrato Route. 
This is followed by the additions to this 1867 edition- a description of a 
recently discovered 1781 map of the province of Darien, and a transcript of 
a written description of it from the period, as well as several tables 
showing estimates for such things as the value of additional trade with 
various countries, the savings in trade, the tonnages traded, etc., from a 
canal were it to be built. The report ends with a very interesting and 
valuable bibliography of other publications relating to the building of an 
interoceanic canal or railroad across Central America.

This is all followed, of course, by the 14 large, folding maps and elevations.

Just listed; no reserve-
<http://tinyurl.com/nlnlx>

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