CHAPTER XII

CENTRAL AMERICA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

HAVING traced the history of Panama to the close of the eighteenth century, we turn now to the more northern provinces, which constitute Central America proper.

In 1787 the captain-generalcy of Guatemala included the thirteen provinces of Soconusco, Chiapas, Suchitepec, San Miguel, Vera Paz, Izalcos, Jerez de la Choluteca, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, San Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. While thus subjected to a common rule, some of the provinces at least seem to have enjoyed a civil and military government of their own.

During the eighteenth century Costa Rica presents nothing of special interest. The government was so badly conducted that little profit accrued either to the people or the crown from a country supposed to be rich in minerals and bearing the flattering name of the Rich Coast.

During the same period, however, that portion of Nicaragua and Honduras which lies along the Caribbean Sea was the scene of exciting events. This tract of country, known to the Spaniards as Mosquito Land or Mosquitia, was inhabited by a tribe of Indians, who called themselves Misskitos. The common name for them, however, was Sambos, and it is supposed that they were the offspring of runaway negro slaves and Indian women.

Though often attacked by the Spaniards, the Sambos had maintained a practical independence and had showed themselves to be fierce and able warriors. Their weapons were

the bow and arrow, the latter being tipped with poison obtained from the manzanilla tree. As there was constant war between the Sambos and the Spaniards, the buccaneers took advantage of the fact to make Mosquitia their headquarters for raids on the Spanish towns. Gradually in the seventeenth century some British settlements were made in the country, which may well have owed their origin to reformed buccaneers.

While Admiral Vernon, in 1740, was waging war on the lower coast, the British made a kind of treaty with the king of the Sambos, and obtaining from him a grant of land, raised the British flag on the coast. This was followed by the appointment of a superintendent of the coast, who was subject to the governor of Jamaica.

So great was the opposition of Spain to these encroachments on her territory that, at the conclusion of peace in 1763 (Treaty of Paris), England agreed to withdraw from all military occupation of the coast, though she covenanted that the numerous cutters of logwood who had established themselves in the country should be allowed to remain. This arrangement not proving satisfactory, another treaty was made between the two countries in 1786, by which England bound herself to evacuate the Mosquito land (now Zelaya), receiving in lieu thereof, a portion of Yucatan and Honduras, which came to be known as Belize or British Honduras. At the same time Spain asserted her sovereignty over the country, merely permitting the occupation of it by the English for commercial purposes. This section of the coast seems also to have been settled originally by reformed buccaneers, who had employed themselves in the cutting of mahogany and dye woods, in which the country was particularly rich.

When war was declared between England and Spain in 1796, the governor of Yucatan made a final effort to expel the English occupants of Belize; but he was unsuccessful, and England, following her immemorial custom, gradually strengthened her hold upon the whole district from the river

Hondo on the north to the river Sarstoon on the south, which rivers now form the boundaries of a territory eight thousand square miles in extent.

While these events were taking place in Honduras and Yucatan, England made a bold attack on Nicaragua, which is especially interesting on account of the subsequent fame of one of the participants.

In 1769 England had made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Fort San Carlos, a strongly fortified place on the Lake of Nicaragua, near its outlet into the San Juan river. The governor of the fort was ill at the time; but his young daughter, a girl of sixteen, took command of the garrison and after an obstinate fight, beat off the besiegers. In 1779 there was a formal declaration of war between the two countries, and England turned her attention once more towards Nicaragua.

An expedition was now planned by General Dalling in Jamaica, which received the approval of the English government and which was expected to have momentous results. Having heard that Peru and other Spanish provinces were discontented with the mother-country, Dalling fitted out an army, which was to ascend the San Juan river, seize the Lake of Nicaragua, and by capturing Granada and Leon on the other coast, split the territory of the Spanish crown into two parts and overthrow its empire in the New World. At the same time it was proposed that the San Juan river, which already conveyed the commerce of Nicaragua to the Caribbean Sea, should be seized and held as a part of the interoceanic canal which, one day, was to join the two oceans.

The British colonies in North America, moreover, at this period (1780) seemed on the point of being lost, and it was thought that a new dominion in the south might take their place under the British flag. It was a far-reaching scheme. Had not climate and disease militated against it, it might have been carried to fulfilment.

In 1780, one year before the defeat of the British arms at Yorktown, all was ready. The force consisted of more

than one thousand eight hundred men under the command of Major John Polson, with five hundred marines under Horatio Nelson, the future hero of Trafalgar, who was now a valiant young captain of twenty-three.

Nelson touched on the Mosquito coast to collect the Sambo allies, who were to act as pilots and to furnish boats for the trip up the river. At the mouth of the San Juan his orders permitted him to leave his marines under the command of Polson; but as the country was new to them, he decided to continue with them during the expedition, and look after their welfare.

Taking boats, the marines and the soldiers began to ascend the river, meeting with great difficulties on account of the shallows, and the fierce heat of the sun. On the 9th of April, however, they arrived at the small island of San Bartolemeo, about forty-eight miles from the lake. It had been fortified by the Spaniards to prevent the passage of the enemy, and was held by a small garrison with several swivel guns. To take this fort was for Nelson the affair of only a few minutes. Leaping on shore at the head of his marines, he sunk so deep into the mud that he lost his shoes, but rushing forward on his bare feet, he boarded the battery, as he expressed it, and captured it.

Sixteen miles above the English reached the neighborhood of the fort of San Juan, but not wishing to approach it by water, they landed their supplies and marched through the woods. On the way one of the men, having been stung by a snake that darted at his face from the bough of a tree, died of the wound, and Nelson himself came near meeting a similar fate. He was lying in a hammock asleep when a "monitory" lizard ran across his face. An Indian, seeing this supposed sign of a deadly reptile's presence, woke him, and he discovered a most venomous snake coiled at his feet. Hardly had he escaped this danger when happening to drink of a spring into which some leaves of the manchineel tree had fallen, he was so badly poisoned that, it is said, his constitution never entirely recovered.

When the English reached the fort, Nelson advised that it be taken by assault, but the senior officer, more cautious, was in favor of a siege. This lasted ten days. With a battery placed on a neighboring hill the English shelled the fort until it surrendered. In the meantime, however, the rainy season had set in. Disease attacked the besiegers, medical supplies were lacking, and the mortality became so great that the bodies of the dead were thrown into the river or left to the carrion birds. Under the circumstances no advance into the interior could be made, and after spending five months of wretchedness in the neighborhood, the survivors reluctantly decided to retire from the fever-stricken country. Out of the one thousand eight hundred that came up the river, only three hundred and eighty reached Jamaica. Nelson, himself, seized with dysentery a few days after the siege began, had already been transported down the river. When he reached Jamaica, he was so ill that he returned on leave to England and recovered only after the most careful nursing.

Thus ended in disaster the second attempt of England to conquer the Spanish colonial possessions. They were defended better by nature than by the arms of Spain.

With the exception of the events just recorded nothing of great interest happened in Nicaragua during the eighteenth century. In spite of the governors and the ecclesiastics who cared for its secular and spiritual welfare, the province seems to have declined rather than improved in production. Some progress, however, does seem to have been made in gathering the Indians into towns and converting them.

Salvador was a portion of the vice-royalty of Guatemala; hence its history down to 1821 is included in the history of that province.

Guatemala itself was one of the most prosperous of the Spanish provinces. The capital, Guatemala City, had been subjected to terrible earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but these disasters