310 DOTTING® ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. XIX.-B. P. 
Mexico; whilst the coast and islands to the south¬ 
ward between Cape Gracias and Cheriqui Lagoon, 
overlook the Caribbean Sea, and especially the ap¬ 
proaches to Panama; so that a more desirable position 
for their purpose it would have been impossible to 
find. 
In this way, the “ Shore,” its people, and its pro¬ 
ducts, first became known ; for the Spaniards were not 
anxious to narrate how signally they had failed to 
make any lodgment there, nor how implacable was the 
hostility which forbade the smallest hope of their ever 
doing so; and therefore Mosquito, before filibusterism 
became the fashion, was comparatively unknown. 
The buccaneers, fully sharing the inveterate hostility 
to the Spaniards which characterized the Mosquito 
Indians, had no difficulty in ingratiating themselves 
with them, and ever found them ready allies in any 
forays upon their mutual foes. It was unquestionably 
owing to the friendly Indians that Morgan’s success 
at Panama was due, as well as that of the famous foray 
on Segovia in the interior of Nicaragua.* 
* The settlements in Honduras and Nicaragua were incessantly 
harassed by the aboriginal tribes sallying from the forests of the 
Mosquito coast. In a dispatch sent by a governor of Cartago, in 
Costa Rica, to the Captain-general of Guatemala in the year 1727, 
grievous complaint is made of the inroads of the Mosquito Indians, 
who had burned several due towns, and made the country desolate. 
The dispatch detailed a project for capturing the head-quarters of the 
marauders, the settlement of Cape Gracias a Dios ; and recommended 
the construction, under the protection of the guns of the ships, of a fort 
from which inroads could be carried in armed boats up the Wanks and 
other rivers. It stated that the Cape settlement could raise 1000 men 
in a few hours. 
