The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 4, April, 1852Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 4, April, 1852
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
Imaginative men are usually warm lovers and fierce haters. Our American
envoy's appreciation of female charms is so intense, that he cannot pass
a pretty woman without inscribing a memorandum respecting her in his
note-book, afterwards to be printed more at length with additional
expressions of admiration. A pair of black eyes cannot sparkle behind a
lattice without being duly recorded. His affection for the ladies is
only equalled by his dislike of the "Britishers." The handsomest girl
and the ugliest idol could scarcely distract his thought from the vices
and crimes of England and the English. If he is to be trusted, the whole
population of Central America regards every Englishman as a bitter
enemy. He paints us in the blackest hues, and prophesies the fall of
England with undisguised delight. Bluster about Britain is the prominent
fault of the book, and one for which the writer will, when he knows more
about us, be ashamed of himself. Every day it is becoming more and more
the interest of Englishmen and Americans to pull together. Consanguinity
and the love of constitutional liberty are strong ties. They may be
forgotten for a time, but in the end must work uppermost. Recent events
have done much to remind us of our near relationship with our
transatlantic cousins, and them of the Anglo-Saxon blood to which they
owe their pre-eminence among the nations of the New World. The grasping
and interfering qualities that bring down upon us the unmitigated
censures of Mr. Squier are quite as prominently manifested in the doings
of his countrymen; and whilst in one chapter he censures our meddlings
with, and claims upon, the Mosquito shore, in another he anticipates
something very like the annexation of all Central America to the United
States.
The Mosquito country, about which we have seen of late so many very
unsatisfactory paragraphs in our newspapers, is a thinly populated and
most unhealthy tract on the Atlantic sea-board of Central America. It is
inhabited by a mixed breed of Indians and Negroes, supposed to be ruled
by a semi-civilized individual, who rejoices in the entomological title
of King of the Mosquitoes, one by no means inappropriate, considering
the amount of small annoyance we have endured through disputes about his
territory. He is supposed to be under British protection; it is
difficult to understand exactly why. The main purpose we have in view
seems to be the securing a proper supply of the peculiar hard woods of
this region. Britons at home generally make peace over their mahogany;
abroad they seem to pick quarrels over it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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