Pictorial Cabinet of Marvels

In the scene underneath the title banners, three white men in European-American suits ride seated on a small hand-operated rail car, while two men with darker skin dressed in hats and red cloths stand behind them, propelling the car into the jungle landscape of Panama by turning a large crank. One of the white men holds a large book while another points forward, as if commanding their advance. As a starting point for a book subtitled “history, science, discovery, travel and adventure, invention, natural history,” this illustration captures how science or geography books might serve as a tool that Europeans take with them while traveling in places unfamiliar to them, to inform their work of collecting, cataloguing, and trading goods. But books are also the product of that colonizing labor, organized into a story for children. As depicted here, the work of white men recording natural history or transporting goods across the Isthmus of Panama contrasts with the physical labor required to power the mechanism on which the Europeans ride, provided by Indigenous men. The divide between different kinds of labor takes on racial overtones in the context of American and European imperialism. This illustration of a book as a “cabinet of marvels” contrasts with the cabinet collections at home, such as The Illustrated Girl's Own Treasury (1861) or Things In-doors, where connections to globally sourced goods are mediated by domestic objects.