John Lloyd Stephens

John Lloyd Stephens 1805-52, American author and traveler, b. Shrewsbury, N.J., grad. Columbia College, 1822. His travels (1834-36) in Europe, the Middle East, and Central America provided the material for a number of studies. By far the best are Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Petraea, and the Holy Land (1837) and Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland (1838). The last seven years of his life were devoted to planning the Panama RR.

Bibliography: See A. and M. Sutton, Among the Maya Ruins (1967).

Stephens, John Lloyd (1805–52),New Jersey‐born author, left his legal practice in 1834 to begin the travels that resulted in his lively, colorful Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land (2 vols., 1837) and Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland (2 vols., 1838). President Van Buren sent him on a vague, confidential mission to Central America, out of which came his enthusiastic accounts of the physical remains of ancient civilizations in the jungles, illustrated by his fellow voyager, Frederick Catherwood, an English artist with some knowledge of archaeology. These were published as Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán (2 vols., 1841) and the supplementary Incidents of Travel in Yucatán (2 vols., 1843).