Scope and Content of Collection

The album contains 21 albumen photographs, taken by an unknown photographer around 1870, of the Isthmus of Panama along the route of the Panama Railroad, roughly in the area where the Panama Canal was eventually built. Included are views of Aspinwall (Colón), the northwest terminus of the railroad and western entrance of the canal; the stations along the railroad; and Panama City, the southern railroad terminus and canal entrance.

The album is bound in brown leather and closes with a silver metal clasp on its foredge. The title is written on the verso of the free front endpaper: Views on the Isthmus. The inital "V" is in the shape of a palm tree.

The photographs are only on the recto pages. Image titles are hand-printed in English in ink, watercolor and pencil with decorative capitals and floral elements on the mounts below the images. From the twelfth image onward the titles and decorations are only penciled in. There are four blank pages at the end of the album.

Arrrangement

In original order.