Recollections of an Ill-Fated Expedition to the Headwaters of the Madeira River in Brazil. In Cooperation with Members of the Madeira and Mamoré Association of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1907. First Edition. Hardcover. Item #25084
479pp. Original blue publisher's cloth stamped in blind on the front panel and the spine panel, top edge gilt. Frontispiece and twenty-seven illustrations (photographs and drawings), six maps (five foldouts -- four of which are in color and a larger one at back). A sober dedication on the front free endpaper reads: "Mother / from / two of the survivors / 10/11/07." In the late 1870s two American contracting firms, P. & T. Collins and Mackie, Scott & Co., sent an expedition to Brazil to build a railway around the falls and rapids of the upper Madeira river. According to the author, "The members of the Madeira and Mamoré Association had long felt that the true history of the enterprise and of their disastrous experience, while connected with it, was worthy of preservation. Few of the many newspaper accounts published at the time were correct and none were complete... At the same time the constantly increasing importance of executing the work they had failed to perform made it probable that a knowledge of their experience would prove valuable to those who, in the not far distant future, would inevitably follow in their footsteps." Laid in are two newspaper clippings: one from The New York Times, July 1912, titled: "Jungle Railroad, Key to Rich Trade, Cost Many Lives."; the other from The Westerly Sun, November 1983, titled: "Historic Amazon Railroad Is Being Restored." Light wear to extremities, a couple of small spots to cloth. A very good+ copy. ; Octavo; Signed by Associated.
Price: $350.00 save 30% $245.00