THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL PROBLEM 129 



ish Honduras in 1847 and had been permitted to carry on the 

 duties of his post under a British exequatur. As to the 

 Bay Islands, he maintained that they also had for some years 

 before the treaty been British territory, and were considered 

 a part, or rather a dependency, of Belize. To Mosquitia, he 

 maintained, the treaty in no way referred, but that it only 

 prohibited further colonization. Existing English posses- 

 sions were in no way affected by the treaty, the inhibitory 

 clauses relating merely to future acquisitions. Further 

 to sustain the correctness of his views, Lord Clarendon called 

 attention to the fact, that although this was fully evidenced 

 in the words of the treaty itself, yet, to remove all possible 

 doubt, the negotiators had thought it well, before final rati- 

 fication, to exchange written declarations upon the subject, 

 the purport of which had been to except British Honduras 

 and its dependencies from the operation of the treaty. Con- 

 tinued occupation of these territories, therefore, by England, 

 or any alterations in their political relations toward the 

 British Government, could not be regarded as an infraction 

 of the treaty. 



Mr. Buchanan was equally firm in his views, which were 

 upon every point diametrically opposed to those of Lord 

 Clarendon. With convictions so radically divergent, the 

 futility of compromise ought to have been foreseen, and the 

 Clayton-Bulwer treaty should then have been abandoned for 

 one more specific in its terms. The controversy was finally 

 closed by Clarendon's somewhat impatient statement that 

 Great Britain could not accept the Monroe Doctrine as an 

 axiom of international law, and that he would decline fur- 

 ther discussion of his country's original rights in Central 

 America. Thus ended the matter for a time, leaving Central 

 American affairs in the same unsatisfactory condition as 

 before. 



About this time an American Canal Company was operat- 

 ing a temporary transit route across Nicaragua over the San 

 Juan River and Lake Nicaragua, and thence, by an overland 

 stage road from the lake, to the Pacific Ocean. Just immedi- 

 ately south of Greytown an American settlement, made up 



