"The geographical position of Constantinople rendered her the Queen of the ancient world. Occupying, as she does, the central point between Europe, Asia, and Africa, she could become the entrepot of the commerce of all these countries, and obtain over them immense preponderance; for in politics, as in strategy, a central position always commands the circumference. This is what the proud city of Constantine could be, but it is what she is not, because, as Montesquieu says, 'God permitted that the Turks should exist on earth, as a people most fit to possess uselessly a great empire.' There exists in the New World a State as admirably situated as Constantinople, and we must say up to this time as uselessly occupied. We allude to the State of Nicaragua. As Constantinople is the centre of the ancient world, so is the town of Leon the centre of the New, and if the tongue of land which separates its two lakes from the Pacific Ocean were cut through, she would command by virtue of her central position the entire coast of North and South America. The State of Nicaragua can become, better than Constantinople, the necessary route of the great commerce of the world, and is destined to attain an extraordinary degree of prosperity and grandeur. France, England, and Holland have a great commercial interest in the establishment of a communication between the two oceans, but England has, more than the other powers, a political interest in the execution of this project. England will see with pleasure Central America becoming a powerful and flourishing State, which will establish a balance of power by creating in Spanish America a new centre of active enterprise, powerful enough to give rise to a feeling of nationality, and to prevent, by backing Mexico, any further encroachments from the north."

This essay attracted much attention in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. But two years later the revolution in France gave its author his opportunity to become President and to plot for the establishment of the Second Empire, and the canal was forgotten by him in those larger ambitions.

CHAPTER IV

THE CLAYTON-BULWER EPISODE

In order fully to understand the British claims in Central America, we must turn back nearly two and a half centuries. In the middle of the seventeenth century British freebooters established themselves at various points on the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, where they presently, in order to secure Government countenance and protection, abandoned their piratical ways and became bona fide colonists, developing a large trade in the fine lumber and dyewoods which there abounded. In 1670 a treaty between Great Britain and Spain confirmed all the British in and about the West Indies forever in possession of all the lands they then actually held. The Spanish Government two years later declared that this applied only to those in Jamaica and other islands, and not to those on the mainland, whom it regarded as freebooters and pirates, while the British Government insisted that it did apply to the lumber colonists of Honduras and Nicaragua.

There was on the Nicaragua coast a tribe of Indians known as the Moscoes, of a good-natured and easy-going disposition. Early in the seventeenth century it received from British adventurers a certain mixture of Caucasian blood, and to this was added a strain of negro blood from the refugees from a wrecked Dutch slave ship. The hybrid race which was thus produced, of Indian, negro, and Caucasian amalgamation, proved most prolific, and soon occupied the entire coast from the Guayape or Patuca to the San Juan River. The name Moscoe was transformed into Mosquito and the people were called Mosquito Indians and their country the Mosquito Coast. About the time of the treaty of 1670,

the chief of this tribe, Oldman by name, was persuaded by the British settlers to proclaim himself King, and an ally of the King of England. According to some, he actually visited England, and was received by Charles II. Thus in "Churchill's Voyages" we read that "he, the King, says that his father, Oldman, King of the Mosquito men, was carried over to England soon after the conquest of Jamaica, and there received from his brother King a crown and commission, which the present Old Jeremy still keeps safely by him; which is but a cocked hat and a ridiculous piece of writing that he should kindly use and relieve such straggling Englishmen as should choose to come that way, with plantains, fish, turtle, etc."

Upon his death in 1686, Oldman was succeeded by his son Jeremy, who the next year went to Jamaica, to beg the British Government to take him and his "kingdom" under the protection of the British Crown. The Governor seems to have regarded the application with suspicion and disfavour, and not to have granted Jeremy's request. Says Sir Hans Sloane: "One King Jeremy came from the Mosquitoes (an Indian people near the provinces of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica); he pretended to be a King there, and came from the others of his country to beg the Duke of Albemarle, Governor of Jamaica, his protection, and that he would send a governor thither with power to war on the Spaniards and pirates. This he alleged to be due to his country from the Crown of England, who had in the reign of King Charles II submitted itself to him. The Duke of Albemarle did nothing in this matter." The British settlers on the Mosquito Coast held their ground, however, and some years later sent Jeremy to Jamaica again, to renew the request for protection. This time he was a little more successful. The British Governor went so far as to make a private agreement with him, under which the Governor was to support the "King" with money and arms, and the "King" was to lend the Governor a company of fifty men to capture runaway slaves in Jamaica. This compact was ratified by

THE "MOSQUITO KING" A PUPPET

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the Jamaica Assembly, and was thereafter regarded as a practical recognition of the sovereignty of the Mosquito King.

The next step toward British rule in Central America was taken in 1739-40, when efforts were made to rouse the Mosquitoes and other Indians to join the British in the war against Spain, and British fleets operated on the Mosquito Coast and also along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. British troops were landed in the Mosquito territory, British forts were built, and a British "Superintendent" became practically the ruler of the land, though the Mosquito "King" retained the outward form of sovereignty. Under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war, no definite disposition was made of the Mosquito territory, and the British remained in possession of their holdings there, as before, in defiance of the Spanish protests. When the Seven Years' War was begun, in 1754, the British Government offered to relinquish all its holdings and claims on the mainland to Spain, if the latter would join Great Britain against France. Spain declined this offer, and allied herself with France, and in consequence the British retained possession of the Mosquito Coast colonies, and this possession was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, which in addition gave British subjects the right to cut trees and engage in the lumber trade not only on the Mosquito Coast but anywhere along the eastern shore of Central America, though it also provided for the demolition of all the forts which the British had erected.

In 1775 the British colonists in the Mosquito country, numbering nearly 500, with twice as many slaves, and with extensive cotton and other plantations in addition to the lumber trade, were organised as a dependency of Jamaica, with a Superintendent, a Council of Government, and a Court of Common Pleas. In this the Spanish Government apparently acquiesced, until war arose again between the two countries in 1779, when an attempt was made to expel the British colonists. In return the British Government

sent thither a fleet, which protected the colonists, and then a second fleet under Horatio Nelson (already referred to in Chapter II), to seize the San Juan River and the lakes, and thus extend British rule across the country from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The latter enterprise failed, and the British colonists were in time driven from all points except the Mosquito Coast. At the end of the war, in the Treaty of Versailles, Great Britain formally abandoned her claim to sovereignty on the mainland, and retained nothing but the privilege of cutting and shipping lumber in Belize (now British Honduras), and it was expressly stipulated that this should in no wise derogate from the Spanish rights of sovereignty over that territory. The British settlements on the Bay Islands and the Mosquito Coast were to be entirely abandoned.

This last agreement, however, was not fulfilled. The British made no pretence, even, of withdrawing, and the Spanish made no attempt to compel them to do so, save to protest against their remaining. A little later, in 1786, a new convention was made, under which the Spanish greatly enlarged the area in Belize in which the British might cut timber, while the British government agreed "to give the most positive orders" for the evacuation of all other regions by British subjects, and, if they disregarded the orders, to withhold from them all succour or protection, and to "disavow them in the most solemn manner." Even in Belize, where they had lumber rights, the British were not to establish any agricultural plantations, or any manufactures, or to make any permanent settlements. Despite this, many British colonists remained on the Bay Islands and the Mosquito Coast, and held their ground against various efforts of the Spanish to expel them. Some time after the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Treaty of 1786 was practically disregarded by the British, and the British settlements were confirmed in their former status.

It would be difficult to tell just when or in what form the British pretensions and aggressions were thus renewed.