NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

THE MOSQUITO TERRITORY.

THE Mosquito territory, or Mosquito shore, and sometimes Moscos, is situated, according to English geographers, between the 11th and 16th northern parallels, and may be regarded as forming the eastern part of the states of Honduras and Nicaragua. The geographers of the United States, however, argue that the designation, "Mosquito shore," can only properly be understood, in a geographical sense, as applying to that portion of the eastern coast of Central America which lies between Cape Gracias à Dios and Bluefields Lagoon, or between the 12th and 15th degrees of north latitude.

This coast was discovered by Columbus, in his fourth voyage, in 1502. He sailed along its entire length, stopping at various points to investigate the country and ascertain the character of its inhabitants. He gave it the name Cariay, and it was accurately characterised by one of his companions, Porras, as una tierra muy baja, a very low land. Columbus himself, in his letter to the Spanish sovereigns, describes the inhabitants as fishers, and " as great sorcerers, very terrible." His son, Fernando

Columbus, is more explicit. He says they were almost negroes in colour, bestial, going naked; in all respects very rude, eating human flesh, and devouring their fish raw, as they happened to catch them. The language of the chroniclers warrant us in believing that the above descriptions applied only to the tribes living on the sea-coast, and that those of the interior, whose language then was different, were a distinct people.

The great incentive to Spanish enterprise in America, and which led to the rapid conquest and settlement of the continent, was the acquisition of the precious metals. But little of these was to be found on the Mosquito shore, and, as a consequence, the tide of Spanish adventure swept by, heedless of the miserable savages who sought a precarious subsistence among its lagoons and forests. It is true a grant of the entire coast, from Cape Gracias to the Gulf of Darien, was made to Diego de Nicuessa for purposes of colonisation within ten years after its discovery, but the expedition which he fitted out to occupy the country was wrecked at the mouth of Wanks river, which was in consequence subsequently known as the Rio de los Perdidos.

From that time forward the attention of Spain was too much absorbed with the other parts of her immense empire in America to enable her to devote much care to this comparatively unattractive shore. Her missionaries, inspired with religious zeal, nevertheless penetrated among its people, and feeble attempts were made to found establishments at Čape Gracias, and probably at other points on the coast. But the resources of March-VOL. CVI. NO. CCCCXXIII.

the country were too few to sustain the latter, and the Indians themselves too debased and savage to comprehend the instructions of the former.

The coast, therefore, remained in its primitive condition until the advent of the buccaneers in the Sea of the Antilles, which was about the middle of the seventeenth century. Its intricate bays and unknown rivers furnished admirable places of refuge and concealment for the small and swift vessels in which they roved the seas. They made permanent stations at Cape Gracias and Bluefields, from which they darted out like hawks on the large galleons that sailed from Nombre de Dios and Carthagena, laden with the riches of Peru. Bluefields, the present seat of Mosquito royalty, derives its name from a noted Dutch pirate, Bleevelt, who once had his head-quarters there.

The establishment at Cape Gracias seems, indeed, to have been the head-quarters and chief place of the buccaneers, not only on this coast, but in the whole Carribean Sea. It is mentioned in nearly every chapter of the narratives which the pirates have left us of their wild and bloody adventures. Here they met to divide their spoil and to decide upon new expeditions. The relations which they maintained with the natives are well described by old Jo. Esquemeling, a Dutch pirate, who wrote about 1670:

We directed our course towards Gracias à Dios, for thither resort many pirates who have friendly correspondence with the Indians there. The custom is, that when any pirates arrive, every one has the liberty to buy himself an Indian woman, at the price of a knife, an old axe, wood-bill, or hatchet. By this contract the woman is obliged to stay with the pirate all the time he remains there. She serves him, meanwhile, with victuals of all sorts that the country affords. The pirate has also liberty to go and hunt and fish where he pleases. Through this frequent converse with the pirates, the Indians sometimes go to sea with them for whole years, so that many of them can speak English. ("Buccaneers of America." London, 1704.)

De Lussan, another member of the fraternity of freebooters, corroborates the same state of things.

The cape has long been inhabited by mulasters (mulattoes) and negroes, both men and women, who have greatly multiplied since a Spanish ship, bound from Guinea, freighted with their fathers, was lost here. Those who escaped from the wreck were courteously received by the Mousticks (Spanish, Moscos; English, Mosquitos), who live hereabout. These Indians assigned their guests a place to grub up, and intermixed with them.

The negroes wrecked from the Spanish slave-ship were augmented in number by the Cimarones or runaway slaves of the Spanish settlements in the interior; and, intermingling with the Indians, originated the mongrel race called Sambos, which now predominates on the Mosquito shore. Still later, when the English planters from Jamaica established themselves on the coast, they brought their slaves with them, who also contributed to increase the negro element. What are called Mosquito Indians, therefore, are a mixed race, combining the blood of Indians and negroes, of Spanish and English traders and adventurers, and of pirates of English, Spanish, Dutch, and other origin. Only as the blood of the race most favoured by the climate keeps perpetually gaining the ascendancy, the Sambo or negro and Indian stock preserve their numerical superiority.

Most of the leading buccaneers were Englishmen, and all had more or

less intimate relations with Jamaica, so that when the close of the protracted wars with Spain put an end to the system, it naturally suggested itself to those in authority to place the close connexion which had been established with the Mosquitos upon a more regular and a more respectable footing. The people themselves ardently sought for the protection of the English, and in 1687 one of their chiefs was conveyed to Jamaica, where he received a commission from the Duke of Albemarle, as King of Mosquito, after which transaction they continued steady in their alliance with the English, and very useful to them on many occasions.

Unfortunately some of the Indian tribes of the interior persevered in their lawless habits, making incursions into the adjacent Spanish settlements, and leading to strong remonstrances on the part of the Spaniards. In consequence of this, in 1740, Governor Trelawney commissioned one Robert Hodgson to the Mosquito shore to restrain the Indians from committing acts of hostility against the Spaniards. Settlements were then first established, and in 1744 a small detachment of troops was sent, reinforced in 1748 by a supply of ordnance. The Spaniards, however, took umbrage at this, and chose to consider the steps taken to ensure the tranquillity of Guatemala as an invasion of the territory. Governor Knowles, who succeeded to Trelawney, was weak enough to advocate a conciliating policy, and an abdication in favour of the Spaniards; the consequence of which was that the Mosquitos, deprived of the protection which they felt they had a right to depend upon, turned their arms. against their quondam protectors. Hence Great Britain was induced by treaties, dated 1763, 1783, and 1786, to evacuate the country, upon condition of certain cessions at Belize and in British Honduras on the coast of Yucatan.

When the power of Spain began to decline, and the adjacent countries passed into the hands of their own rulers, the English were induced to save the Mosquitos-who had no class of persons among them from whom to elect a governing body-from anarchy, by once more extending over them the ægis of their protection. The offer was gladly accepted, and one of their chiefs was selected as an embodiment of the principle of royalty. Several of these barbarian kings, all much given to drink, succeeded to one another. One of them, who had been christened Robert Charles Frederick, provided by his will that the affairs of his kingdom should be administered by Colonel M'Donald, the superintendent of Belize, as regent, during the minority of his heir; that M'Donald should be guardian of his children; and, with reference to the spiritual wants of his beloved subjects, "the United Church of England and Ireland should be the established religion of the Mosquito nation for ever." This lastnamed king was succeeded by the present sovereign-his son, George William Clarence-who was duly proclaimed king by the regent M'Donald and his colleagues, and an agent was appointed to live with him at Bluefields.

And what is the kind of country, the protectorate over which, and of its sable monarch and bulpis-faced Sambos,* is a source of so much jealousy to our Transatlantic cousins? What of its topography, soil,

Scarcely a Sambo but is afflicted with bulpis, a facial carbuncle, like the Bouton d'Alep, the effect of damp, heat, and bad water.

climate, and resources? The coast is a line of sand, enclosing one long and nearly continuous succession of great lagoons, the length of which is nearly parallel thereto, and they are so joined to each other by narrow necks of water, that with the exception of here and there a bit of land, called a haulover, from the necessity of dragging the canoes over them, the greater part of the distance between Gracias and Bluefields may be accomplished on smooth water. The lowlands consist of Mangrove woods, swamps, and large level lawns or sandy savannahs, supporting few trees except the red or long-leaved pine. The land improves in quality as it gains in elevation in the interior, and is covered with wood, and there are numerous rivers, whose banks are also well clad with trees, shrubs, or flowering and fruit-bearing plants. The soil will produce abundant and excellent crops of indigo, cotton, coffee, sugar, rice, and maize almost everywhere, but no European settlement has ever prospered in so unhealthy a climate-witness the attempts of the English to found colonies at Vera Paz and at Poyer, on the Black River; those of the French at Tehuantepec and Cape Gracias; and those of the Germans at Santo Tomas and Bluefields. The lapse of a year or two is in general sufficient to extirpate all the inhabitants of a European colony.

Mr. Samuel A. Bard describes the approach to the coast, near Bluefields, as holding out no delusions.

The approach to the coast, near Bluefields, holds out no delusions. The shore is flat, and in all respects tame and uninteresting. A white line of sand, a green belt of trees, with no relief except here and there a solitary palm, and a few blue hills in the distance, are the only objects which are offered to the expectant eyes of the voyager. A nearer approach reveals a large lagoon, protected by a narrow belt of sand, covered, on the inner side, with a dense mass of mangrovetrees; and this is the harbour of Bluefields. The entrance is narrow but not difficult, at the foot of a high, rocky bluff, which completely commands the

passage.

The town, or rather the collection of huts called by that name, lies nearly nine miles from the entrance. After much tacking, and backing, and filling, to avoid the innumerable banks and shallows in the lagoon, we finally arrived at the anchorage. We had hardly got our anchor down, before we were boarded by a very pompous black man, dressed in a shirt of red check, pantaloons of white cotton cloth, and a glazed straw-hat, with feet innocent of shoes, whose office nobody knew, further than that he was called "Admiral Rodney," and was an important functionary in the "Mosquito kingdom." He bustled about in an extraordinary way, but his final purpose seemed narrowed down to getting a dram, and pocketing a couple of dollars, slily slipped into his hand by the captain, just before he got over the side. When he had left, we were told that we could go on shore.

Bluefields is an imperial city, the residence of the court of the Mosquito kingdom, and therefore merits a particular description. As I have said, it is a collection of the rudest possible thatched huts. Among them are two or three framed buildings, one of which is the residence of a Mr. Bell, an Englishman, with whom, as I afterwards learned, resided that world-renowned monarch "George William Clarence, King of all the Mosquitos." The site of the huts is picturesque, being upon comparatively high ground, at a point where a considerable stream from the interior enters the lagoon. There are two villages; the principal one, or Bluefields Proper, which is much the largest, containing

* Waikna; Adventures on the Mosquito Shore. By Samuel A. Bard. New York.

perhaps five hundred people; and "Carlsruhe," a kind of dependency, so named by a colony of Prussians who had attempted to establish themselves here, but whose colony, at the time of my visit, had utterly failed. Out of more than a hundred of the poor people, who had been induced to come here, but three or four were left, existing in a state of great debility and distress. Most of their companions had died, but a few had escaped to the interior, where they bear convincing witness to the wickedness of attempting to found colonies, from northern climates, on low, pestiferous shores, under the tropics.

Mr. Bard expresses surprise at finding that, with few exceptions, the inhabitants of Bluefields were unmitigated negroes or Sambosthat is to say, mixed negro and Indian: he had heard Mosquito shore was occupied by the Mosquito Indians, but soon found that there were few, if any, pure Indians on the entire coast. The first object of the American artist, adventurer, and romancer, on landing at Bluefields, was to procure a roof in which to shelter himself and his mysterious companion, Antonio; first, the mild-eyed Indian boy, with a Doctor Dee speculum, in which Mr. Bard declares himself to have seen miraculous things; next, a descendant of the ruling and priestly classes of Central America, between whom there exists "a mysterious bond or secret sympathy of organisation," as witnessed in the interview with the shy and timid Indian girl, the Sukia, or enchantress of the moonlit ruins of ancient times; and now the dreaded chieftain and victorious leader of the unrelenting Itzaes of Yucatan!

The next object was to obtain a favourable presentation at court. Nor was he long destined to pine away his days in devising plans to obtain an introduction to his Mosquito majesty.

Rising early on the morning subsequent to my arrival, I started out to see the sights of Bluefields. Following a broad path, leading to a grove of cocoa-nut trees, which shadowed over the river, tall and trim, I met a white man, of thin and serious visage, who eyed me curiously for a moment, bowed slightly, and passed on in silence. The distant air of an Englishman, on meeting an American, is generally reciprocated by equally frigid formality. So I stared coldly, bowed stiffly, and also passed on. I smiled to think what a deal of affectation had been wasted on both sides, for it would have been unnatural if two white men were not glad to see each other's faces in a land of ebony like this. So I involuntarily turned half round, just in time to witness a similar evolution on the part of my thin friend. It was evident that his thoughts were but reflections of my own, and being the younger of the two I retraced my steps, and approached him with a laughing "Good morning!" He responded to my salutation with an equally pregnant "Good morning!" at the same time raising his hand to his ear, in token of being hard of hearing. Conversation opened, and I at once found I was in the presence of a man of superior education, large experience, and altogether out of place in the Mosquito metropolis. After a long walk, in which we passed a rough board structure, surmounted by a stumpy pole, supporting a small flag-a sort of hybrid between the Union Jack and the "Stars and Stripes"-called by Mr. Bell the "House of Justice," I accepted his invitation to accompany him home to coffee.

His house was a plain building of rough boards, with several small rooms, all opening into the principal apartment, in which I was invited to sit down. A sleepy-looking black girl, with an enormous shock of frizzled hair, was sweeping the floor, in a languid, mechanical way, calculated to superinduce yawning even after a brisk morning walk. The partitions were hung with many prints, in which "her most gracious Majesty" appeared in all the multiform glory of steel, lithograph, and chromotint. A gun or two, a table in the corner, supporting a confused collection of books and papers, with some ropes, boots, and iron