Vlll 
PREFACE. 
“ Trades Union ” which the United States have now 
become. 
That the period is not far off when at least the 
northern part of the Western Hemisphere will be more 
or less closed to English commercial enterprise, seems 
clear from the following apparently acceptable counsel 
just given (April 1869) to the new President, General 
U. S. Grant:— 
“ Here are Cuba, St. Domingo, and Mexico, and the Cen¬ 
tral American States down to Darien. They are the locks 
and keys of the Gulf and of the American Isthmus passages 
from ocean to ocean. A decisive American policy on the 
part of General Grant will absorb all these outlying islands 
and States, and add so largely to our material revenues as to 
reduce the national debt to a mere trifle. Then there are 
the Alabama claims, a proper basis upon which to negotiate 
the cession to the United States of her Britannic Majesty's 
North American provinces of the New Dominion, from Hali¬ 
fax to Vancouver Island; for this thing, too, is in the order 
of “ manifest destiny." 
To this subject, of which the “Mosquito Ques¬ 
tion ?? forms no inconsiderable part, the undersigned 
has devoted much time and attention, which he hopes 
may atone in some degree for the marked contrast be¬ 
tween the literary style of his part of the book and that 
of Dr. Berthold Seemann, who is still absent in Ni¬ 
caragua, but whose ‘Dot-tings’ have already appeared 
in the ‘ Athenaeum.’ 
The Plates are from sketches taken on the spot by 
Lieutenant Oliver, E.A., and Mr. George Chambers, 
