Sublime

Stephens was the president of the railroad, which was a wholly American-owned stock company with its main office in the old Tontine Building on Wall Street. The capitalization was a million dollars.

For three months they explored and mapped the coastal plain, collecting some sixteen hundred plants—palms, orchids, grasses, bamboos—among which they were able to identify six hundred new species. They witnessed a total eclipse, an earthquake, and, on a night in November, a spectacular meteor shower that went on for hours. They paddled up the Apure

Geographical curiosity and his abiding love for wilderness travel seem to have been the main reasons for these journeys, but he usually managed to find some practical, economic rationale: a railroad survey, a party of miners that wanted to be guided to some remote mountain range, a potential livestock market that called for investigation. In 1858

Morgan was among the first generation of bankers whose clients were primarily private corporations instead of governments, but there were substantial continuities in approach. His mediations among the railroad barons were very much in the tradition of the supranational financial/diplomatic service operated by the Rothschilds and the Barings in