The subjects of the former are, really, the aborigines of the whole line of coast between Nicaragua and Honduras--there being no Indians remaining in the former republic, and but few in the latter. Of these, too--the Nicaraguans--we have no definite ethnological information. Mr. Squier speaks of them as occupants of the islands of the lakes of the interior. Colonel Galindo also mentions them; but I infer, from his account, that their original language is lost, and that Spanish is their present tongue; just as it is said to be that of the aborigines of St. Salvador and Costa Rica. This makes it difficult to fix them. And the difficulty is increased when we resort to history, tradition, and archæology. History makes them Mexicans--Asteks from the kingdom of Montezuma, and colonists of the Peninsula, just as the Phœnicians were of Carthage. Archæology goes the same way. A detailed description of Mr. Squier's discoveries, is an accession to ethnology which is anxiously expected. At any rate, stone ruins and carved decorations have been found; so that what Mr. Stephenson has written about Yucatan and Guatemala, may be repeated in the case of Nicaragua. Be it so. The difficulty will be but increased; since whatever facts makes Nicaragua Mexican, isolates the Moskitos. They are now in contact with Spaniards and Englishmen--populations whose civilization differs from their own; and populations who are evidently intrusive and of recent origin. Precisely the same would be the case, if the Nicaraguans were made Mexican. The civilization would be of another sort; the population which introduced it would be equally intrusive; and the only difference would be a difference of stage and degree--a little earlier in the way of time, and a little less contrast in the way of skill and industry. But the evidence in favour of the Mexican origin of the Nicaraguans, is doubtful; and so is the fact of their having wholly lost their native tongue; and until one of these two opinions be proved, it will be well to suspend our judgment as to the isolation of the Moskitos. If, indeed, either of them be true, their ethnological position will be a difficult question. With nothing in Honduras to compare them with--with nothing tangible, or with an apparently incompatible affinity in Nicaragua--with only very general miscellaneous affinities in Guatemala--their ethnological affinities are as peculiar as their political constitution. Nevertheless, isolated as their language is, it has undoubted _general affinities with those of America at large_; and this is all that it is safe to say at present. But it is safe to say _this_. We have plenty of data for their tongue, in a grammar of Mr. Henderson's, published at New York, 1846.