The chief fact in the history of the Moskitos, is that they were never subject to the Spaniards. Each continent affords a specimen of this isolated freedom--the independence of some exceptional and impracticable tribes, as compared with the universal empire of some encroaching European power. The Circassians in Caucasus, the Tshuktshi Koriaks in North-eastern Asia, and the Kaffres in Africa, show this. Their relations with the buccaneers were, probably, of an amicable description. So they were with the Negroes--maroon and imported. And this, perhaps, has determined their _differentiæ_. They are intertropical American aborigines, who have become partially European, without becoming Spanish. Their physical conformation is that of the South rather than the North American; and, here it must be remembered, that we are passing from one moiety of the new hemisphere to the other. With a skin which is olive-coloured rather than red, they have small limbs and undersized frames; whilst their habits are, _mutatis mutandis_, those of the intertropical African. This means, that the exuberance of soil, and the heat of the climate, makes them agriculturists rather than shepherds, and idlers rather than agriculturists; since the least possible amount of exertion gives them roots and fruits; whilst it is only those wants which are compatible with indolence that they care to satisfy. They presume rather than improve upon the warmth of their suns, and the fertility of the soil. When they get liquor, they get drunk; when they work hardest, they cut mahogany. Canoes and harpoons represent the native industry. _Wulasha_ is the name of their Evil Spirit, and _Liwaia_ that of a water-god. I cannot but think that there is much intermixture amongst them. At the same time, the _data_ for ascertaining the amount are wanting. Their greatest intercourse has, probably, been with the Negro; their next greatest with the Englishman. Of the population of the interior, we know next to nothing. Here their neighbours are Spaniards. They are frontagers to the river San Juan. This gives them their value in politics. They are the only well-known extant Indians between Guatemala and Veragua. This gives them their value in ethnology. The populations to which they were most immediately allied, have disappeared from history. This isolates them; so that there is no class to which they can be subordinated. At the same time, they are quite as like the nearest known tribes as the _American_ ethnologist is prepared to expect. What they were in their truly natural state, when, unmodified by either Englishman or Spaniard, Black or Indian, they represented the indigenous civilization (such as it was) of their coast, is uncertain. * * * * *