The population of the town does not exceed three hundred, having considerably diminished since the English usurpation. Besides what may be called the native inhabitants, and who exhibit the same characteristics in language, habits, and customs with the lower classes in the interior of the state, there are a few foreigners, and some creoles of pure stock, who reside here as agents, or consignees of mercantile houses, and as commission dealers. There are also the English authorities, consisting chiefly of negroes from Jamaica. The inhabitants, therefore, exhibit every variety of race and complexion. Whites, Indians, negroes, mestizos, and sambos,—black, brown, yellow, and fair,—all mingle together with the utmost freedom, and in total disregard of those conventionalities which are founded on caste. In what might be called the best families, if it were possible to institute comparisons on the wrong side of zero, it is no uncommon thing to find three and four shades of complexion, from which it may be inferred that the social relations are very lax. This is unfortunately the fact; and the examples which have been set upon this coast in times past, by Jamaica traders, have not had the effect of improving morals. There is neither church nor school-house in San Juan, nor indeed in the whole of what the English facetiously call the “Mosquito Kingdom.” Before the seizure, San Juan was a curacy, dependent upon the Diocess of Nicaragua, but subsequently to that event it was vacated, in consequence of the obstacles thrown in the way of its continuance by the English officials, whose high sense of Christian duty would not permit them to tolerate anything but the English Church, which is, I believe, the established religion throughout the dominions of “His Mosquito Majesty!” Occasionally a priest, in his black robes, is seen flitting about the town; but unless it is desired to find out the residence of the prettiest of the nut-brown señoritas, it is not always prudent to inquire too closely into his movements.