58 
DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. IV—B.S. 
this dislike of the Nicaraguans to foreigners was 
chiefly due to feelings of jealousy which the native 
men conceived on account of the favour with which 
a foreigner is regarded by the fair sex. No doubt 
that is one reason, hut only one of the many; a white 
man, never mind the social standing he may have 
enjoyed in his own country, would be willingly ac¬ 
cepted in marriage by the daughters of even the first 
families. But such cases are extremely rare, the na¬ 
tive belles not coming up to our standard of beauty, 
nor their notions of housekeeping up to our ideas of 
tidiness. The repugnance of the Spanish Americans 
to foreign immigration seems to me perfectly natural. 
They have seen enough to understand that it would 
be the making of their countries if a numerous striv¬ 
ing population were to arrive, but they also feel in¬ 
stinctively that it would be their own “ unmaking.” 
They have neither the bodily nor mental power to hold 
their own against such rivals; and they therefore prefer 
vegetating in their own indolent way than to be hustled 
about by a superior race in a struggle for existence in 
which they know they will be worsted. The difference 
of colour is also very much in the way of a more 
favourable feeling towards foreigners springing up. 
Though by law colour as a distinction of caste has 
been abolished, and the natives try to deport them¬ 
selves as if they were ignorant that any real differ¬ 
ence ever existed, yet the foreign whites show them 
by their whole bearing that they know the full value 
of belonging to a race considered to be at the top of 
the classification of the different species of Homo , and 
