126 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



San Juan River, and full rights of navigation in the great 

 lake were also accorded her. The plan was ostensibly a 

 compromise measure, which would likely have relieved the 

 situation had it been accepted; but Nicaragua not only re- 

 jected the agreement with a show of indignation, but curtly 

 announced her displeasure at this instance of foreign med- 

 dling in her domestic affairs. Costa Rica's acceptance of 

 the plan was not in itself sufficient; so the efforts of Webster 

 and Crampton came to naught. 



With matters in this unsatisfactory condition in Nicaragua 

 and "Mosquitia," the attention of the United States was 

 suddenly directed to Honduras. English capital had recently 

 become interested in a railway project to connect two Hon- 

 duran ports on the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, and 

 thereby to establish a transit route which would compete 

 with the American transit route across Nicaragua, and also 

 with the Panama route still farther south. The Bay Islands 



a group lying off the Honduran and Guatemalan coasts 



had formerly been appropriated by Great Britain and con- 

 stituted, according to her assertions, a dependency of her set- 

 tlement on the mainland (Belize or "British Honduras"). 

 Her sovereignty over these islands had negligently been 

 permitted to lapse, but in the interests of her projected 

 schemes in Honduras, the British Government decided to 

 reoccupy them. Accordingly, on June 17, 1852, the London 

 foreign office announced that the islands of Ronatan, Bonacca, 

 Brabant, Helma, and Morant should constitute a colony, "to 

 be known and designated as the Colony of the Bay Islands." 

 In August following the islands were formally occupied by 

 crown officials. 



Whatever may have been the merit in the British conten- 

 tion of ownership of the Bay Islands, the moment chosen for 

 the overt act of their seizure was a most unfortunate one. 

 The amicable relations of the two nations had at all times 

 been more or less strained since the Tigre Island incident ; 

 and since the promulgation of an unsatisfactory treaty each 

 government had continued to view the acts of the other in 

 Central America with a high degree of suspicion and dis- 



