Pennsylvania’s Amazon Princess Railroad

About the Book

The Republic of Bolivia, as it existed prior to the termination of the war with Chile in 1882, had an area of 597,271 square miles, exclusive of the territory of El Chaco, claimed alike by Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina. The population, though never carefully determined, was estimated by the best Bolivian authorities as two and a half million, and of this, about half consisted of savage and domesticated Indians. In other words, a population about equal to that of the State of Massachusetts occupied a territory three and a half times greater in area than that covered by our ten New England and Middle States combined. During the colonial days of South America, Bolivia was a part of Peru, having been subdued and annexed by Hernando, a brother of Francisco Pizarro, and in 1559, it was formed into the Audiencia of Charcas, or Upper Peru. “The haughtiest of all the old Spanish Conquistadores,” says a prominent writer, “settled in the country and clustered their titled families around its ten thousand open silver-mines.” slogan: Keep Faith in Self and, Have Fun Trying W. L. “Gunny” ADAMS

About the Author

First of all, this book is not mine and I can’t claim to be its author. It is a reprint of a 1907 publishing by Neville B. Craig. Craig was the last survivor of the 1st “all-American” expedition to open the Amazon River Complex, that portion of the world that is roughly the size of the United States, to international trade. This railroad project was the outcome of the visit of Emperor Dom Pedro II to the U.S. Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, Pa. As the first foreign Head of State to visit the fledgling Americas Empire at its conception, the proposed railroad was intended to help Bolivia gain access to the Atlantic Ocean trade routes, and to further help settle a border dispute between the countries of the Andes Mountain headwaters of the Amazon River. The Craig book was an “after-action” collection of the personal papers and writings of the expedition leaders as they died off. He was expedition administration director and the ad-hoc engineer who was on hand when of July 4th of 1879 the first running of the train promptly fell off the tracks at the first curve. He titled his rendition as The Ill-fated Expedition to Build The Mamore-Madeira Railroad. The river port they built on the Madeira River, the worlds fourth longest river, became the Capitol of the State of Rondonia, in 1980, or one century after the expedition went bankrupt because of European bond-holders fraud. It is time for the total Americas to revisit our historical ties within. Brazil and the United States are the sibling partners of the new Americas Empire that has grown out of Dom Pedro II visiting The Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 and the first development of the Madeira River port of Porto Velho, Rondonioa State, Brazil.