Harper's Weekly Carries A Story On The World Transportation Commission's Visit To Ceylon
On April 27, 1895, the popular periodical Harper's Weekly carried a story on the World Transportation Commission's visit to Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka.
The article was part of an illustrated series on the Commission's worldwide tour, with stories describing the geography, culture, and transportation systems of the countries visited.
The World Transportation Commission was organized by railroad publicist Joseph Gladding Pangborn to gather information about foreign transportation systems, especially railroads, for the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. In addition to Pangborn, the Commission included a railroad engineer, a graphic artist, and the photographer William Henry Jackson. The American Memory collection Around the World in the 1890s: Photographs from the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896 contains nearly 900 images from the Commission's three-year odyssey.
“Here and there the spire of a church or the minarets of a mosque soar above the trees, and in one place the strangely shaped tower of a Buddhist temple shows itself in the background. ”
— Description of Colombo, capital of Ceylon, as viewed from the harbor. Harper's Weekly, April 27, 1895.
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