Sublime

but it was only the beginning of Flagler’s involvement with railroading in Florida. Shortly afterward, he bought another Jacksonville short line and extended it directly eastward to Jacksonville Beach and its environs, where he constructed a series of coal and lumber docks that made Jacksonville a major port.

On June 11, 1881, the road was purchased outright by the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Inter-océanique for $20 million. Park himself cleared about $7 million on the transaction. Years later, in 1904, when the United States purchased all the holdings of the long-since bankrupt French canal company—its equipment, properties, the unfinished excavatio

In practice, once the railroad was in operation, it was to mean the more or less permanent stationing of American gunboats in Panamanian waters and the landing of American marines and sailors during a half dozen revolutions or “disturbances,” including the disturbance of 1903, the so-called Panama Revolution, which marked the final separation of Pa

Walker soon became disgusted by Frémont’s self-promoting histrionics and rank cowardice in the field – a combination he found particularly loathsome. They

I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be companions or co-operate, since one would not operate at all. They would pa

From Chimborazo the party pushed farther south, into the valley of the upper Amazon. Then they were climbing again into the rarefied air of the Andes, traveling now, on occasion, along the “wonderful remains of the Inca Roads” and taking, as it happens, about the same route as the present-day Pan-American Highway. The Inca Road and the thought of t

The legacy was truly amazing. His work on fish, the initial research on glaciers, the impact of his writing on the Ice Age, the zest and glamour he brought to American culture at a critical moment, were all contributions of the first order. His beloved Museum of Comparative Zoology—the Agassiz Museum, or simply the Agassiz, as it came to be known i

Those were not empty words. In 1852 Fillmore’s secretary of state, Daniel Webster, gave speculators carte blanche to sail to the guano-laden Lobos Islands off the coast of northern Peru and scrape them clean, promising naval protection and dispatching a warship for that purpose. It was a bold yet dangerous plan, as Peru claimed sovereignty over the

One hundred and one miles long and two hundred feet wide at its narrowest point, the canal was owned by the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez, a private stock company. Of the company’s 32 directors, 16 were French, 9 British, 5 Egyptian, 1 Dutch, and 1 American. The British government held 44 percent of the stock, another 44 percent w