A EUN TO KICAEAGUA. 351 



steamers connect Panama and San Juan del Sur on 

 the one side, and Aspinwall and Greytown on the 

 other, with California and the Eastern States. It 

 was not until 1851 that a company was formed, under 

 the auspices of Mr Vanderbilt, called the Accessory 

 Transit Company, for the purpose of conveying pas- 

 sengers through Nicaragua ; for this purpose a charter 

 was ohtained from the Nicaragua Government for a 

 transit route, in which it was stipulated that a certain 

 annual percentage should be paid by the Company to 

 the Government out of its net profit. In the follow- 

 ing year the route was first opened, and every month 

 hundreds of travellers, belonging to the most enter- 

 prising and progressive race in the world, passed 

 through this magnificent and fertile country, and 

 wondered no less at the extent and variety of its 

 resources, than at the apathy and incapacity of the 

 inhabitants, calling themselves civilised, who could 

 allow them to remain undeveloped. A correspond- 

 ing degree of astonishment was doubtless felt among 

 the Nicaraguans themselves, when they found their 

 country turned into a highway, which crowds of im- 

 petuous Anglo-Saxons traversed like those gigantic 

 ants whose broad beaten tracks are to be seen in their 

 own forests. 



The contact produced results which were only 

 natural under the circumstances. It became evident 

 to the Nicaraguans, who had been for two years en- 

 gaged in a bloody civil war, that the infusion of a 



