The work of three scientists who explored South and Central America is on view in this case. Titian Ramsay Peale, (APS 1833) toured the Magdalena River in Colombia from 1830-1832. From 1838-1842 he was the zoologist in the Scientific Corps for the United States Exploring Expedition that circumnavigated the world under the command of Charles Wilkes, USN. The watercolors of the lizard (1), King vulture (a popular figure in Mayan codices) and iguana (2), grasshopper and bat (3) are his creation and in 1838 he recorded: “This remarkable bat flew on board the USS Peacock, off the coast of Brazil on the 18th of November when the ship was about 100 miles from land, south of Cape St. Rogue.”           

John Alden Mason was an archaeological anthropologist and linguist whose research centered on the languages and cultures of the Indians of the American Southwest and Mexico. His most productive research centered on Maya archaeology including work at Palenque in present day Chiapas, Mexico during two separate expeditions. Photos (4,6) were taken at the Temple of the Inscriptions that housed the tomb of Pakal, ruler during the 7th century. The ruins date back from 100 BC to around 800 AD. Photo (5) was taken in Palenque, which was absorbed into the jungle following its decline and where it is estimated that most of the ruins remain unexplored. Mason wrote about the mask (4), “….the mask is made of jade with eyes of shell and obsidian and was found in fragmentary condition on the face of the buried man in the sarcophagus at Palenque.” He was curator of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania from 1926-1958.

Robert Cushman Murphy (APS 1946) was considered one of the 20th century’s great ornithologists and was curator of mammals and birds at the Brooklyn Museum when he explored Peru from 1913-1917.  Dr. Murphy is in the middle of the photo (7) to the left of two Colombian Chocó tribesmen in Southern Darien, which is presently on the border between Panama and Colombia. The journal (8) was kept by Dr. Murphy on the Peruvian Littoral Expedition of 1919-1920 and is opened to an illustration that he sketched while on San Gallon Island, which he described in 1919:

“The whole scene was exquisite, and while we stood looking over the black roof-ridge of a bare range (at about 1,100 feet), toward the gleaming white Ballestas, and the Chinchas half hidden in a purplish haze, with the cobweb of foam streaks stretching away from them in all directions over the translucent jewel-like bosom of the Pacific, five condors appeared from nowhere and circled round and round our heads, sometimes coming within the range of a tossed stone.” And “The condors….returning again and again to the peak to inspect us, and now and then swooping down the gulley below so that we could see the white on the back of their tooth-edged wings.”

Titian Ramsay Peale (APS 1833), sketches from two South American expeditions

(1) Lizard—Magdalena River, South America, watercolor

(2) King Vulture (condor)—Turbaco New Grenada, now Columbia (1830) Iguana—Columbia, watercolor (1830-1832)

(3) Bat—Brazil, watercolor and pencil, (1838 November 18) Grasshopper, watercolor and pencil (1831)

John Alden Mason Photographs

(4) Mask from crypt at Palenque (1952)

(5) Maya stone figure (1913-1917)

(6) Two photographs of men excavating at crypt in Palenque (1952)

Robert Cushman Murphy Photographs

(7) Robert Cushman Murphy with Chocó tribesmen and other men

(8) Record of Peruvian Littoral Expedition, San Gallan Island (1919-1920)