Doc. No. 75. 



45 



ment of Central America, nor to any of its States ^ soliciting their ac- 

 knowledgment of him as a sovereign, much less raising questions of ter- 

 ritory apart from those of Honduras and Nicaragua: wherefore, my go%^- 

 ernment, legally and in good faith, can and does declare that it has never 

 recognised, nor does recognise, such a kingdom or king of Mosquito, and 

 therefore it cannot recognise, and does not recognise, the territorial pre- 

 tensions spoken of in your note above referred to. 



The kingdom of Mosquito has never existed, and does not now exist. 

 Truly, sir, all is reduced to a few savages, who wander in the deserts 

 and forests on the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, living by the chase 

 and fishing, without houses, without a known language, without written 

 characters, without arts, commerce, laws, or religion, which, according 

 to received principles, would make them appear before the civilized world 

 as composing a regular society, and^ vv^iat is much more, constituting 

 an empire. 



What is unquestionable, (if one may speak candidly,) is, that certain 

 British subjects, under favor of the neighboring settlements of Jamaica 

 and Belize, and in consequence of the trafiic established by the Spanish 

 government, and subsequently by the central republic, came to the coasts 

 and familiarized with the Mosquito tribe; and seeing the virgin state and 

 abundance of the natural productions of that part of the Central Ameri- 

 can territory and its advantageous geographical situation, they became 

 desirous of appropriating it, seeking, for the purpose, the improper means 

 of teaching their Enghsh idiom and a part of their customs to some of 

 the Mosquitos — carrying with them the son of some favored family, edu- 

 cating him in their fashions, and thus preparing an instrument to serve 

 their designs with the title of King. This fantastic personage has not 

 and cannot be presented to the civilizatioii of the nineteenth century, nor 

 make himself acknowledged by this government, or by other neighboring 

 ones, since there cannot nor ought to be a sovereignty in that wandering 

 fraction of the Central American people; for such an act would give a 

 right to the savage hordes who exist in different parts of the world to 

 form kingdoms under the protection of other governments, and to put 

 themselves in comparison (en paragon) with civilized States, which 

 would place limits on civilization, and establish disorder and universal 

 anarchy. 



Subjects and agents of her Britannic Majesty are the persons who have 

 announced and proclaimed the leader of this tribe as a sovereign and ally 

 of the English government; but neither of their agents has been able to 

 present, or has presented, to any government of Central America, cre- 

 dentials of his appearing to be a reai and direct agent of the supposititious 

 King of Mosquito; neither has Great Britain herself accredited a charge 

 d'affaires to these governments, who might have moved these questions 

 of sovereignty, territory, and appropriation of a port, acknowledged by 

 the whole v/orld as the property of the sovereign State of Nicaragua. On 

 the contrary, the government of her Britannic Majesty, through the me- 

 dium of the chief of its naval forces on the Atlantic station, Yice-Admiral 

 Sir Charles Adam, in establishing the blockade of 1842 at the port of San 

 Juan on the north, recognised and declared it as belonging to Nicaragua, 

 in order to coerce the government of this State to pay various British sub- 

 jects certain sums they claimed, amounting to $14,000, as he made 

 known to this ministry and to the trade of other nations. 



