230 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap.XIV.—B.P. 
of the shingle one, characteristic of this very useful 
“Yankee notion,” we were received by the English 
consul, Doctor Green, as he is familiarly styled by 
the residents. I found before me a small, spare man, 
looking as if all colour had been washed out of him 
by the “ thirteen months ” of rain alluded to above, 
at which latter notion, by the bye, he was inclined 
to be rather indignant, and protested against it on the 
ground that he ought to know best, after so many 
years spent on the Mosquito coast, where the sea¬ 
sons, wet or dry, were well marked, especially further 
north, as at Corn Island and Pearl Cay, and where 
the people had their full share of as beautiful wea¬ 
ther as could be met with anywhere in the tropics. 
As to the heat, it was so much tempered by the pre¬ 
vailing north-east trade-winds that nowhere on the 
Spanish Main, nor indeed for the matter of that in 
any part of the West Indies was the climate more 
equable. 
Long experience of the Mosquito coast enables me 
to corroborate most fully these facts, and I subse¬ 
quently found that the pallor of Dr. Green’s coun¬ 
tenance was due probably to constitutional causes 
rather than to the nature of the climate,—for he was 
the only person in Grey town who really looked ill 
the population consists of all sorts of nationalities, 
and is, perhaps, as healthy a foreign element as ever 
emigrated from their native lands. I may instance 
Mr. Cottrell, the American consul, and his charming 
wife, also a long time resident in the country; neither 
of whom have the conventional cadaverous face and 
